The Osmium Run
by Red River Hog
Summary: While Enterprise is engaged in a diplomatic function, Phlox and Reed are sent on a secret special mission. Naturally, mayhem ensues.
1. Chapter 1 - Archer

**Disclaimer: the characters of Star Trek belong to Paramount. Any other characters sprang out of my own strange head. If I receive any checks of compensation, I will dutifully forward them to Paramount ;)**

 **Author's notes:The plot bunny for this one hopped straight out of my chemistry book, page 87, the bit on osmium tetroxide.**

 **The story is completed (25 chapters) and has been expertly betaed by LoyaulteMeLie, to whom a big warm thanks, especially for making sure Malcolm doesn't sound like some damn yank ;)**

 **I will post about one chapter per day. Reviews would make me dizzy with delight, even critical ones, because then at least I know someone is reading it. On the other hand, if there are no reviews at all, I might get cranky and hold further chapters hostage, huaaha.**

Chapter 1: Archer

Captain's log, February 2, 2153

Enterprise _has arrived at Andoria, where we have been invited to attend the first stage of cultural exchanges between the Vulcans and Andorians in the wake of their recent peace treaty, which_ Enterprise _helped negotiate. It is a great honor for us to take part in this historic event. Along with the Vulcan delegation, we are attending their annual Sun Festival, to celebrate the Andorian summer solstice. We are looking forward to a weeklong showcase of Andorian culture and celebrations._

Captain's personal log, February…whatever.

Well, here we go again. The next eight days are going to be…interesting. Once again, we find ourselves stuck in the middle between two peoples who'd rather have nothing to do with one another. At least this time, intentions are good and honorable, and with a bit of luck we'll get through this without any diplomatic incidents. I tried to convince the Brass at Starfleet that now we've done our part ensuring a peace we should be allowed to go back to our original mandate and go exploring, and let the Vulcans and Andorians work out the wrinkles by themselves. But no, our presence may "favorably influence future interactions with either planet", blah blah, so here we are, playing at diplomats again.

The Vulcans arrived this morning, looking rather uninterested in the whole thing. They had brought whatever passes for winter gear on their planet, which turned out to be woefully inadequate on a 'gentle Andorian summer day', as Shran wistfully called it, or in earth terms, cold enough to freeze your balls into a rock-hard little set of marbles. We supplemented the Vulcans with some Starfleet issue cold weather long johns, which they accepted with raised eyebrows, but gratefully enough. The ears had been a problem though, being, as they were, prone to frostbite. As it turns out, the Andorians had foreseen this and had graciously provided the Vulcan delegation with multiple pairs of earmuffs, made from some fluffy fake fur and dyed with thoroughly un-Vulcan colors, such as powdery pink and mint green. I'm not so sure if these were meant as an insult or a true gesture of friendly concern. The only other person I saw wearing something similar in the crowd was an Andorian toddler perched on her father's shoulders. T'Pol was spared this indignity because I was able to talk her into wearing my old sheep wool hat, although Phlox confided in me that she made an appearance in sickbay to ask for an extra strong dose of nasal numbing agent.

The Vulcans were real troopers and stood ramrod straight through the ceremony, looking uncomfortable but dignified. Shran, at some point, leaned over to me and whispered wickedly, "Aren't they adorable, Pinkskin?" I caught Soval's gaze under his pink earmuffs, and he couldn't have looked grumpier if they'd tarred and feathered him and asked him to dance the funky chicken. Maybe he was already planning a revenge move for when the Andorians, in a few weeks, are required to sit through an equivalent ceremony in the scathing heat of Vulcan.

Freezing Vulcans, melting Andorians. The delights of trying to reconcile a hot blooded species from a cold planet with a cold blooded species from a hot planet. Well, if there's one thing I've learned on this mission it's that interplanetary diplomacy occasionally involves a certain modicum of….well, humiliation. If I can wield a chainsaw while half naked and hung with baubles like a Christmas tree, then Soval could damn well endure some pink earmuffs.

But all of this would be easy enough if it hadn't been for the unexpected emergence of a third variable: the Tellarites. Two days ago Soval contacted me on a private channel and informed me that the Tellarites have approached the Vulcans with a request for help. Tellar Prime is experiencing an outbreak of a highly contagious viral brain disease that affects children before the onset of puberty. Over a hundred children have fallen ill in the capital, and there are fears the disease may be spreading despite efforts to quarantine the sick. There is a cure, but it requires medication based on a refined form of osmium, a metallic element that is rare on most planets and absent on Tellar. The Tellarites' stored supply of the stuff was exhausted when something went wrong in the refinement process required to make the medication. They'll have to start over, but their planet has no osmium supplies. The Vulcans have agreed to provide some osmium, under the strictest condition that the delivery be kept absolutely secret from the Andorians. Andorians and Tellarites hate each other with a flaming passion, and no doubt the Vulcans fear that if it became known they had dealings with the Tellarites, their new fragile peace with Andoria would shatter like thin ice.

Personally, I think the Vulcans got it all wrong. Andorians, if Shran and others I have met are any indication, are temperamental, easy to anger, but not cruel. Surely, no matter how much they hate Tellarites, they wouldn't object to a simple charitable mission aimed at saving innocent children? Then again, if the Vulcans asked for any favors in return for the osmium, it's known only to themselves and the Tellarites.

I offered to have the osmium delivered to Tellar by one of our shuttle craft, but both the High Command and Starfleet were adamant that neither the Vulcans nor Enterprise must be caught in any backdoor dealings with Tellarites while making love to the Andorians at the front door. The whole tangled mess makes my head spin – no one can accuse these diplomats of making a thing easy if they can throw a few boots into the machine to muck it up instead.

And so the Tellarites have sent a private cargo pilot of their choice to pick up the osmium. Such small cargo runners are common enough between the major inhabited planets, and it wouldn't be unusual for some of them to approach larger ships in orbit in hopes of a good trade. The Tellarites selected this particular pilot based on some past dealings they've had with her; someone apparently thought her honorable enough to be trusted with the job but not so conspicuous as to attract attention. Oddly enough, she's human. There are few humans this far out who aren't part of Starfleet. Clearly, the Tellarites thought that a human cargo pilot approaching a human starship would not raise too much suspicion. Her real name is unknown to the Tellarites, but I've been told she goes by the pseudonym 'Amelia Earhart'. Well. That may not mean much to a Tellarite, but to this old human aviator it sounds like some kind of blasphemy. I only hope, whoever this woman is, that she does honor to that name.

Starfleet and the Vulcans apparently shared my misgivings, considering few of those private cargo runners are reputed to be trustworthy. They have agreed to let me send my tactical officer along on the journey to make sure that the osmium gets where it is intended. If anyone should miss Lieutenant Reed during the next eight days, he is officially quarantined in his quarters with a highly contagious case of the Tellarite version of the Chicken pox (oh yes, the irony). Only myself, the senior staff and some of his armory crew know the real story, and they have all been sworn to secrecy.

I must admit I was envying Malcolm – surely a little diverting run to Tellar would be a great deal more exciting than sitting through eight days of dance performances and diplomatic speeches while freezing your nuts off.

That is, until I saw the small cargo vessel arrive in our launch bay. Now I wasn't so sure I shouldn't pity him instead….


	2. Chapter 2 - Earhart

Chapter 2: Earhart

When I heard of the brain disease on Tellar Prime, I felt bad about that, I really did. I mean, Tellarites are nobody's favorite species, but I suppose only some kind of first class asshole would enjoy the idea of a bunch of kids suffering and dying. So when the Tellarites contacted me and asked me to pick up some medication from _Enterprise_ at Andoria, I was happy enough to accept. On the surface, it looked like any other job, but I supposed there was much more at stake. Why me? Heck, no doubt Borav, bless his crusty old pig heart, put in a word for me with his people. I know he smuggles stuff for some high ranking bigwigs in the Tellarite government; they probably asked his opinion on who they could trust.

Let me tell you, doing business with Tellarites ranks right up there on my bucket list with wallowing in pig manure. Truthfully though, if I was honest, you could do worse. Once you get past the shit-on-your-head attitude, they aren't so bad. A Tellarite will tell you what he thinks of you (and then some!) the moment you meet, but once he's properly articulated his profound distaste of your person, he usually has no problem getting on with business as agreed. As long as I've delivered my goods on time and in good repair, I've never had to haggle a Tellarite for my payment, or threaten that I would rip off his pointed ears and shove them up his logical, unemotional, treacherous, greenish little backside. If you know who I'm talking about.

And then there was the cargo. I like to know all about what I'm being asked to haul, so I did my research. Osmium, a rare metallic element. Chemical symbol Os, number 76 on the periodic table. Some planets have osmium, others don't. Earth has some, and it's used in various alloys to make very hard metals. _Enterprise_ herself – they sure brag about it in the official Starfleet press release – has a thin coat of osmiridium shielding her warp nacelles. Vulcan has quite a bit of osmium, while Tellar and Nausicaa have none at all. When powdered and left open to the air, osmium reacts with oxygen to form crystals of osmium tetroxide. Oddly enough, these crystals are volatile, emitting a slow stream of particles, with varying effects on one's nervous system, according to species. Klingons go into convulsions. Vulcans break out in green pustules and start quoting poetry. Humans go blind and then drop dead. Tellarites have figured out how to process it to cure a deadly brain disease. And Nausicaans ….well, Nausicaans are the trouble, aren't they?

Nausicaans – you've seen them, no doubt – big, stupid knuckle draggers with nothing but teeth, horns and warts all over their faces. Almost as ugly as Tellarites, but without the loving personality. Here's the thing about Nausicaans, though: they like to get high. And osmium tetroxide – the very substance needed to make that medication for the sick little Tellarites – is just the thing Nausicaans like most to get high on.

I've seen it once, on Broria Station, which has an osmium den frequented by Nausicaans. A whole room full of those big, vicious brutes, osmium pipes hanging from their jaws, swaying blissfully in some imaginary breeze like so many corn stalks in an Iowa field – now that is a soothing sight to behold. Wherever Nausicaans go when they're hopped up on os, they are not going to bust up bars or beat hapless aliens to a pulp while they're at it. Proprietors of space stations around the galaxy would pay big moolah for a nice, sturdy supply of the stuff.

The Vulcans, in a rare show of generosity, unrequited or not (probably not, knowing the Vulcans), had donated ten kilograms of pure grade, powdered osmium. Easy enough for the Vulcans, who have rich osmium mines, but on Nausicaa you could probably buy an entire continent and a couple of oceans for that much of the stuff. In other words, the temptation for selling to the highest bidder should be astronomical.

Which brings me to the reason I was mad enough to spit nails. Starfleet, rot the arrogant bastards, decided I couldn't be trusted with such valuable cargo, even though the Tellarites had specifically vouched for me. I was informed that they were going to stick me with one of their security goons, to 'assist in the timely delivery of the cargo'. Yeah, whatever. I've worked hard for my reputation, and to have it so carelessly questioned by Starfleet-the-Noble-and-Mighty made me want to ram my _Amazon_ up _Enterprise's_ big fat ass when I got there.

I'd spent the last two and a half light years on my way to the rendezvous working myself into a putrid mood over this.

I mean, I work _alone_.

My vessel, _Amazon_ , is just big enough for one; adding another person would make her unbearably crowded. I hadn't shared quarters since I kicked out my last boyfriend. If this guy snored, I was going to have to murder him. Besides, I hadn't had a shower in…yeah, let's not go there. I take sponge baths. When I have enough water. I cut my hair short with a Klingon dagger – easier to keep clean that way. I'm no pretty little palomino, let me tell you. But to imply I could be peddling off the osmium, as if I would do such a low-life thing! Now don't get me wrong here – I'm a tough old broad and I ain't squeamish when it comes to turning a profit. But there's no way I'd do so over the dead bodies of a hundred Tellarite kiddos. Ugly as the little oinkers may be. I do have _some_ ethics.

So here I was meeting with _Enterprise_ to load up the osmium and Mr. 'Highly trained specialist in tactical operations.' My ass. They couldn't kid me, of course. I'd seen enough Starfleet security lurking around space ports and stations to know exactly what they were going to saddle me with: some hulking, six-foot-four klutz with no neck and the IQ of a packing peanut. Conversational skills maybe a notch above the old point-and-grunt, if I was lucky.

At last, _Enterprise_ appeared in my view screen, orbiting Andoria alongside a couple of sleek Vulcan vessels. They were having some kind of kiss-and-make-up festival between Vulcans and Andorians, and so as to not bruise any feelings, I was made to understand that the osmium transfer was to happen out of sight of the Andorians. Fine with me; I like to operate in the shadows.

As I approached, I spent a few moments marveling at _Enterprise's_ strong, sleek curves, gleaming blue like some kind of ice goddess in the cool Andorian sunlight. Then I remembered that I was pissed off, and as her launch bay doors opened and I steered _Amazon_ up her backside, I did contemplate bumping her up and scratching her paint just a little bit. But the last thing I'd want right now was for them to question my competence as a pilot, so I made nice and slipped in as smoothly as a greased suppository.

"Welcome aboard, _Amazon_ ," came a pleasant female voice over my intercom.


	3. Chapter 3 - Earhart

Chapter 3: Earhart

"Welcome aboard, Miss…uh…Earhart."

The captain – Archer – seemed a bit awkward after he checked me out, but his handshake was firm enough. You've guessed by now that Amelia Earhart isn't my real name. I left my real name back on earth, amidst an untidy heap of discarded memories and ex-boyfriends. Out here, among the cargo runners, most of us have some kind of past to forget, and it's general custom to go with a pseudonym. There's a one-legged Klingon who calls himself 'Son of Kahless', which has done nothing to recommend him to his fellow Klingons, who take anything to do with a certain Kahless rather alarmingly seriously.

I picked Amelia because I've always admired her and – not to flatter myself – I think we have things in common. Like me, she was a tall drink of water who lived in a man's world and didn't give two shits whether anybody thought she couldn't do what she had to do. ( _Un_ like me, she was also very charming and pretty. Never mind that, though.) And lastly, my real name did sound a bit like 'Amelia', so it was a natural fit.

Archer motioned to the man on his left. "Miss..uhm…Earhart, this is my armory officer and tactical chief, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed."

I had a good look at the fellow, somewhat surprised. So this was my security watchdog. This guy was maybe five foot eight on a tall day (did I mention I'm a tad over six feet?), slightly built, skinny as a stray cat, with a square, angular face, and pale, watchful eyes. And he had a nice, long neck. My first thought was that he was odd-looking, but kinda cute, in an underfed sort of way.

So here I could have made a good first impression, said something delightfully charming and clever, started our collaboration off on a good note, you know. But instead I did what I always do when I'm a bit flustered – I blurted out the first damn stupid thing that came into my head.

"Ain't you a bit shrimpy for a security guy?"

Reed wasn't amused, which I could tell from the way his face became ice cold without him actually moving any muscles in it. Archer looked in equal parts annoyed and entertained, and next to him the tall blond guy with the cute nose was about to bust some capillaries trying not to explode. The two security gorillas by the door exchanged a glance and then ducked their heads and stared at their boots.

The blond guy smirked and rocked on his toes. "Actually, Miss, we considered upgradin' you to a bigger model, but seein' the size of your vessel we thought you'd be best served with the compact edition."

"Trip!" Archer snapped, throwing him an annoyed glance. Then he turned an icy stare at me. "I can assure you that Lieutenant Reed is up to the task."

Well, since I had bungled up the introduction, I figured it was best to talk business, so I changed the subject. "Do you have the…uh…cargo?"

Archer nodded. "We can speak plainly here, Miss…. Earhart. This is Commander Tucker, my chief engineer." He gestured to Cute Nose on his right. "My senior staff and some of Lieutenant Reed's crew are aware of the mission. Dr. Phlox, our medical officer, is packing up the osmium as we speak. As you may know, osmium is highly toxic and must be…"

"….kept in an airtight container at all times, as it emits volatile particles that are toxic to most species," I finished, and when they all just stared at me, I shrugged, "I do my research." I doubt whether they were impressed, but they looked at least somewhat satisfied.

"Well." Archer rubbed his hands and put on a labored smile. "While we wait for Dr. Phlox, why don't you show Lieutenant Reed aboard your vessel. We, uh, will leave you two to get acquainted."

I nodded to Reed, and he followed me on board.

I know _Amazon_ isn't much to look at, but she's mine, and I'm proud of her. She isn't much bigger than one of _Enterprise's_ shuttles, but she's got warp two. She's got a small cargo hold aft of the main cabin, which can be pressurized if the cargo demands it. For this trip I'd keep it depressurized and sealed off, to save energy. Aside from the main cabin, there's another small one with my bunk and a cupboard. There's a tiny onboard toilet, so small that when I sit on the commode I can't even close the door without it hitting my knees (not that there's any point in closing the door when you're the only one on board). Next to my loo is a niche in the bulkhead that contains my liquor cabinet. I'm very fond of my booze collection. One thing you should know about me is that I drink a lot. Nights are lonely out in space. Well, days too, when you think about it. My liver is probably flammable.

Reed was looking around, checking everything out. He went to the front console and looked over the controls.

"Weapons?" he asked in a clipped tone.

"Weapons?" I echoed stupidly.

"Yes, weapons." He looked at me with those cool pale eyes, and when I just stared, he took on that patient voice people adopt when they are anything but. "You know, things that go 'boom'?" He briefly closed his eyes and continued, "what kind of weapons is your vessel equipped with?"

I scratched my head. "Uh...she came with a laser gun," I pointed to the targeting dial and firing button. "I've never used it, though..."

"A laser gun?'" His voice had gone up an octave. "That's it? No phase cannon? Torpedoes?"

He must be crazy. I don't know too much about torpedoes, but I imagine the recoil alone would propel _Amazon_ half way across the solar system.

"Hull plating?" he asked pleadingly. I just shrugged.

With a sigh, he dropped his big duffle bag and it hit the deck with a conspicuous metallic clang. Apparently, Mr. Armory Officer had brought along half the armory. There was probably little point explaining to someone like him that the secret to my long term survival was to avoid any kind of armed conflict. I'm an expert at slipping by and staying out of sight.

Nevertheless, I gave it a try. "I've learned it's best not to piss people off."

"Jolly good," he snapped. "When we run into a band of Nausicaan pirates, we'll just invite them over for tea and crumpets and ask them to please take the osmium off our hands. That way we shouldn't piss them off too much."

I still thought he was kind of cute, but he sure could be pissy. That accent clearly suggested that he was British. Maybe being pissy was a British thing, what did I know? I haven't met many Brits.

Next, he was checking out the bathroom. "No shower?" he observed, distaste evident in his voice.

"I take sponge baths," I snapped, and then, feeling sorry for my ill grace, amended somewhat sheepishly, "No one's ever died from a bit of dirt."

He looked me up and down. "Clearly not," he remarked. Talk about ill grace.

I felt we weren't starting off on the best foot here, so I decided on a peace offering. I gestured to my sleeping cabin. "You, uh, are welcome to sleep on my bunk", I told him. "I'll move my stuff out of there…"

Reed's face softened and a quick smile ghosted across it. I thought it looked good on him. "Thank you, but that's not necessary. You keep your bunk. I'll sleep elsewhere."

There wasn't a lot of 'elsewhere' on _Amazon_ , of course. About the only other space large enough for a person to stretch out was the deck in the main cabin.

"Well, then…you can sleep on my rug."

The rug had been a gift from Borav, after I got him out of that pickle with the Orion slave girls. It was an unkempt, hairy old thing that had been to too many places and smelled of alien body fluids (not unlike Borav himself, I guess). My first impulse had been to fling it out the airlock, but then I plunked it down in the middle of the cabin just to see how it would look there. It's been there ever since. I suppose I kind of got used to it.

For a full twenty seconds or so, Reed stared at my rug. His jaw worked a bit, but no sound came out, though his eyes went round and his nostrils flared with disdain. Then his gaze searched around the cabin and he nodded to one of the narrow storage benches. "I'll sleep there, if it's all the same to you."

I shrugged. He'd have to crunch his legs up to his chest to fit. But secretly, I was relieved that I could keep my own bunk.

Reed sat down on the bench, fished a PADD out of his pocket and started typing on it. I sat in the pilot's seat. We were waiting for that Phlox fellow to bring the osmium, I supposed.

The silence was a bit awkward, and I felt compelled to say something. "Do you snore?"

He threw me another one of those pale stares, but this time there was a tiny smirk at the corner of his mouth. "If I do, will you smother me with a pillow?"

 _I just might_ , I thought.

It was going to be a long three days to Tellar.


	4. Chapter 4 - Reed

Chapter 4: Reed

When I saw _Amazon_ lurch into the launch bay – the small craft's name rather a pompous one for something that looked like a flying garden shed held together by little more than duct tape and a prayer – I had my first serious doubts about the likelihood of success of our mission.

My confidence didn't increase when the pilot disembarked. A rather tall, gangly woman, she wore an outfit that seemed as cobbled together as her vessel, comprised of bits and pieces of Klingon and Andorian uniforms, two different boots, and a wild-west-style leather gun belt with a clumsy looking weapon stuck in it of a kind I had never seen before. She had a plain, longish face and a tussock of brown hair that suggested she had lost a cat fight with an angry lawn mower.

Poor Captain Archer just about swallowed his tongue every time he pronounced her assumed name. After all, Amelia Earhart is the patron saint of all flyboys, and I bet it didn't sit well with him to see some loutish, unmannered woman appropriate her sacred name. Can't say I had much of a problem with it, having used rather a long list of pseudonyms myself during my Section days. Maybe I never exactly called myself 'Charles bloody Lindbergh', but the idea of shedding one's identity was certainly not new to me.

Her vessel might have been adequate enough, if you ignored that bilious orange shag carpet and the rather alarming lack of defensive capability. Here we were, about to travel through one of the most pirate-riddled sectors with a cargo so valuable that everyone in the galaxy would be gunning for us if they knew we were carrying it, and the only weapon she had on board was a laser gun – a laser! – which would have been the star of the world armory expo a hundred and twenty years ago. Well, in a battle it would do a fine job at _pointing_ at the enemy vessel, just long enough for us to get a lovely illuminated view of their incoming photon torpedo. That, and whatever that ridiculous water pistol was that she had strapped to her thigh.

Of course, our main strategy on this mission was to operate in secrecy, but I know a bit about secrecy; especially that when it fails, you usually find yourself in dire need of some backup fire power. At least I'd brought a couple of phase pistols, a phase rifle, some plasma charges and half a dozen stun grenades. Maybe, if we got engaged in battle, I could stand on the hull and hurl those at the enemy. For added effect, I could even roar and thump my chest! But oh, wait – sound doesn't carry in space, does it – so there went that strategy. Brilliant. Just _bloody brilliant._

While we were waiting for Phlox, I got out my PADD and started a list of my concerns to be forwarded to the captain. But then the good doctor appeared, and my list suddenly got a lot longer.

We heard him clanking down the stairs to the shuttle deck, and seconds later he showed up in the hatch, laden with two large duffle bags, a couple of terrariums, a small water-filled tank and one of his freak-show smiles spread across his entire face.

"Ah, there you are, Lieutenant. Do you mind giving me a hand with these?"

"What on earth is all this?" I protested as he handed me the tank. Inside, a fat blue salamander stared vacantly at me from under a pink plastic plant.

"Only my osmotic eel, a Nublian newt and a few Regulan bloodworms. You must allow me at least a basic first aid kit, Lieutenant, hmm?"

The penny dropped. "You're coming _along_?"

I glanced at Earhart, who looked like she was about to bolt. At a guess, she wasn't accustomed to sharing quarters at all, and now, in addition to one irritable Englishman, she had to put up with a jolly Denobulan and his private zoo of atrocities.

"Not to worry," Phlox beamed as he looked around the tiny cabin. I had hardly ever seen him so happy. "I shall require very little space during the journey. You will barely notice I am here."

So now, on top of our lack of defences on this harebrained mission, I was going to have to worry about the safety of our ship's CMO, arguably one of the most valuable members of the _Enterprise_ crew. My day was not getting any better.

"Doctor," I implored when I found my voice. "This is a potentially dangerous mission; I see no need for you to…"

"Lieutenant," he cut me off, "this is a _medical_ mission. I have expertise with osmium that is needed on Tellar. The distilling process is very delicate; I can't simply, what is that expression, 'phone it in' over subspace. I was able to convince Captain Archer that my presence is required. If you have complaints, please take them to the Captain."

So I marched straight up to the Captain's ready room, where I stood at attention with my eyes on the bulkhead behind him and itemised my objections. He listened and nodded patiently, and when I was done he got up and clapped me on the shoulder.

"Malcolm," he intoned in his paternal voice. (If I had a week's salary for every time Captain Archer clapped me on the shoulder, I could retire to my own private beach front cottage on Risa at the end of this mission.)

"Malcolm. Phlox's experience with the osmium cure will be very appreciated on Tellar. Besides," he smiled down at me conspiratorially, "he's expressed an interest in going on more away missions. He doesn't get off the ship that often. Let him have some of the fun!"

Well, wasn't this splendid. First Doctor Doolittle, and now Captain Congeniality thought we were going on some kind of adventure cruise. I pointed out that surely the absence of a second senior officer would raise suspicions during the Andorian celebrations, but the Captain assured me that Phlox had officially requested a leave of absence to 'visit his extended family on Denobula', since there would be enough medical doctors present on Andoria and the Vulcan ships to cover any emergencies in his absence. And Lieutenant Reed, the poor pathetic wanker, who was languishing in his quarters with the Tellarite pox, would be attended by Crewman Cutler, who was immune to that disease as she had suffered through it as a child. Bugger. They had it all worked out admirably, and I had no more arguments to set against them.

"I am putting you in command of this mission, Lieutenant", Archer told me. "I have made it clear to Phlox that he is to obey your orders in all matters that involve tactical decisions." Well, that sounded reassuringly vague. And here came another shoulder clap. "Keep him safe, Malcolm."

It took all my considerable self-control not to roll my eyes at my Captain. Instead, I gave him a curt nod and rejoined the others on _Amazon_.

Phlox was sitting on one of the benches, storing away his things. He greeted me with a smile, a bit less exuberant than the one he had worn earlier and tinged with sympathetic understanding. "Ah, Mr. Reed, I assume your objections have gone unheeded?"

"It's nothing personal, Phlox", I sighed.

"I understand, Lieutenant. You are worried about my safety." He stood and for a moment, I was wondering if he was going to clap me on the shoulder as well. But of course, Denobulans don't like casual touch. "Your concern honours me. But I assure you, I have not always led the sheltered life of a ship's medical officer. I am quite accustomed to, how do humans say, 'huffing it'?"

I had to think about that one for a moment. "I do believe you mean 'roughing it', doctor."

"Ah, of course," he beamed happily, "but I was close, hmmm?"

Before we launched, Phlox showed us the osmium, safely secured and sealed in one of his tea thermoses, which he had modified to hold the highly toxic substance. He handed it to us, advising us cheerfully, "Don't drop it on your foot now, hmm?" Which I almost did, as the container was astonishingly weighty for such a small volume. After all, osmium is the densest of all elements, twice as heavy as lead. That much I remembered from my 'Chemistry for Armory Personnel' course at Starfleet academy.

So that was it – one small cylinder. There was enough pure-grade osmium powder in there to make the whole planet of Nausicaa rock in tune to the galactic background noise. "Keep it safe," I told Phlox, and he nodded solemnly as he secured it in his duffle bag under the bench.

Half an hour later, while Earhart piloted her vessel out of orbit, Phlox and I watched both _Enterprise_ and Andoria grow smaller in _Amazon's_ tiny rear window.


	5. Chapter 5 - Phlox

Chapter 5: Phlox

I watched Lieutenant Reed sleep fitfully on the narrow storage bench as our small craft sped through the night. Of course, one could say it is always night in space, but we had set our onboard chronometer to match the time of Maralla, the capital on the northern continent of Tellar, our destination. Naturally, Mr. Reed insisted on staying awake to keep watch, until I reminded him that since I was between hibernation cycles, I would not require any sleep during our journey. He reluctantly agreed to a few hours of rest, but not before explicitly ordering me to wake him at the smallest indication of any kind of trouble.

It was unfortunate that my presence on this mission was creating added stress for Lieutenant Reed. While all my crewmates are admirably dedicated to their respective jobs – otherwise they would not have been chosen to represent their species on Earth's first deep space mission – Mr. Reed frequently carries his devotion to his duties to a point that is unhealthy for his wellbeing. I was aware that he considered my safety his personal charge. Although I technically outrank him – at least in sickbay – Captain Archer had placed Lieutenant Reed in command of this mission, and I was going to do all I could to ease his burden and follow his orders. As long as they were reasonable, of course.

Our host was a captivating human specimen. So far, my interactions with humans had mostly included members of Starfleet, who, after all, have been trained to uphold a certain discipline. Lieutenant Reed is perhaps the most pronounced example of restraint and self-negation among my human companions on Enterprise. In contrast, Ms. Earhart appeared quite a bit more … unpredictable. As soon as we were on our course, she set the autopilot and disappeared behind the closed door of her bunk, announcing that she was taking a nap. A couple of hours later, she re-emerged, and from the rather unmistakable odor emanating from her person it had to be concluded that her 'nap' had included a close encounter with, what is that lovely expression, a 'wee drop of the good stuff'. Mr. Reed, who I believe would rather have a fully grown fire leech attached to his genitals than be caught drinking on duty, threw me a tight-lipped glance that suggested he expected I would keep an eye on our pilot's alcohol consumption. But as she appeared neither drunk nor compromised in any way, I concluded that liberal imbibing was most likely a regular part of her day. The human liver is a remarkable organ, imbued with astonishing regenerative powers. I must write a paper about it someday.

We shared a quiet meal of rations and tea, and afterwards the evening passed mostly in silence. This was regrettable, as I had hoped for a bit of conversation; maybe a lively exchange of anecdotes as is customary among Denobulan travelers, or at least a discussion of our mission. But Mr. Reed was absorbed in his PADD – no doubt plotting more armory power upgrades to annoy Commander Tucker – and Ms. Earhart sat quietly in the pilot seat, her back to the cabin. I am still somewhat unskilled in interpreting the subtle moods of humans, but it was clear even to me that Mr. Reed and Ms. Earhart were not overcome with mutual affection towards one another.

To brighten the atmosphere, I suggested a game of Denobulan tickle-tack, but received only a couple of blank stares in return. I hindsight, it may have been an unsuitable suggestion; after all, on Denobula, a game of tickle-tack customarily ends with the combatants engaged in vigorous group copulation. Judging by the chill air between my travel companions, however, I rather doubted whether I would be privileged to witness a mating ritual between these two. Then again, as my beloved Feezal would say, "Optimism, Phlox! Optimism!" or, in the words of my human friends, "You never know."

It was shortly after this that Ms. Earhart retired to her cabin again, this time for the night, and I suggested Lieutenant Reed might want to take the chance to catch some much-needed sleep.

I passed the long night hours reviewing a treatise on the osmium-based cure for the Tellarite palsy, written by the eminent Dr. Krav, one of the founders of the Interspecies Medical Exchange. I had been fortunate to apprentice for Dr. Krav during my first assignment outside Denobula, rather more years ago than I would like to admit. It had been a wonderful opportunity for an eager young doctor to assist the Master in the development of the osmium cure, when a similar outbreak of the Tellarie palsy virus had occurred on a remote outpost.

Later, I tended to my animals, although I refrained from singing to them, as I usually do, so as to not disturb my sleeping companions. The Lieutenant looked quite uncomfortable, lying on his back with one arm and one leg hanging over the edge of the bench, the other leg propped awkwardly against the bulkhead. He had not bothered to undress or even remove his boots, and he was snoring rather loudly. I made a mental note to offer him a nasal decongestant the next time he woke up.

I was just sitting down for a cup of Denobulan tea when the quality of light in the cabin suddenly changed. It took me a second to realize that the change had not come from within, but from outside our vessel. I glanced up, and froze with the tea half way to my mouth. The stars were gone. Instead, a large, ragged-looking ship hung in the view screen. As I stared, two vast doors slowly opened in its belly. My tea cup clattered to the deck as I stood. "Lieutenant, you'd better…" but a movement at my shoulder told me that Mr. Reed was already wide awake.

"Get Earhart," he said quietly, and at the same moment, a bright flash emanated from the other vessel. _Amazon_ lurched violently as she fell out of warp, and both I and Mr. Reed landed buttocks-first on the deck.

Ms. Earhart came rushing out of her cabin, barefoot and in some kind of flowing night gown. She took one look at the view screen and uttered that most versatile of human expressions, "Fuck."

"You know this vessel?" The Lieutenant picked himself off the floor.

She nodded, grimly, working at the controls. "Nausicaan cargo ship. Could be pirates."

"Can we go back to warp?" Mr. Reed shouted. There was a loud clanking sound on the hull and our ship shuddered.

"Too late," she cried and hit her fist on the console in frustration, "they got us with their grapplers."

Mr. Reed helped me up with one arm and shoved me toward one of the benches. "Sit there, doctor. Stay out of the way."

I nodded numbly, only too happy to comply.

A sizzle of smoke issued from the console, and Ms. Earhart looked mournfully at Mr. Reed. "That energy flash fried up our communications," she said apologetically.

"How many on board?" he snapped at her.

She shook her head. "Could be anywhere from three or four to a dozen."

"Time to try out that laser of yours," he told her grimly.

The orange beam of the laser flashed repeatedly towards the other ship, accompanied by soft cursing and a shake of the head from Mr. Reed. "Try to hit the grappler cables," he advised as _Amazon_ was steadily reeled in towards the belly of our enemy, which was now nearly above us.

But it was useless. Any hope that our laser might shear through the restraints was sunk when all it produced were a few pitiful scorch marks on the thick cables that held us. In a last desperate attempt, Mr. Reed plunged toward the console and hit a few switches, and _Amazon_ lurched backwards as her impulse drive engaged, straining against the cables.

"You'll break her hull," Ms. Earhart snapped at him, but he threw the controls forward, and we sped a short distance and then yanked to a sudden stop as the cables first slackened and then held as _Amazon_ hit the end of her tether. We were well and truly caught. In another half minute, the great cargo doors closed around us as the alien vessel squatted over _Amazon_ and engulfed us in her belly. Rather like a fat goose laying an egg, only in reverse.

Mr. Reed abandoned the control panels and began tearing through his duffle in the other storage bench, pulling out a rifle, a couple of phase pistols, several stun grenades and other accoutrements which he stuffed into his pockets. Within seconds, he was hung with hardware like one of the villains in Mr. Tucker's action movies.

"Arm yourself," he shouted at Ms. Earhart, but she had already strapped on her belt with that odd-looking pistol, and despite the rush and panic my mind registered that the combination of knee-length flower-printed nightgown and gun holster was one of the more incongruous outfits I had seen on a human. He threw her a couple of objects – grenades or stun charges, I believe – which she caught in mid-air and then stuffed into her belt.

It was quite revealing to see Lieutenant Reed in his element, operating in full tactical mode. The man moved with a speed and energy that I had not seen in him. Of course, whenever there is any excitement on _Enterprise_ , I usually don't get to examine our armory officer until the action is all over, by which time he is frequently quite subdued from injury or exhaustion.

The Lieutenant sprang to my side, yanked me rather rudely off the bench, threw open the lid and pulled out my bags. He found the osmium flask and shoved it into my arms. "Get in there," he barked at me. I stared at him, then at the bench, startled. "Oh? But why? Oh dear, I…I don't believe I can fit…Lieutenant, I protest…" I spluttered as he manhandled me to the bench and bodily stuffed me inside, with my limbs impossibly folded around me. I must say, for such a slightly-built human, the good Lieutenant possesses an astonishing amount of strength. He produced a phase pistol from his jumpsuit and pushed it into my free hand, which was wedged somewhere between my buttocks and the wall of the storage trunk.

"We're about to be boarded, Doctor," he said, his eyes bright with intensity. "Listen very carefully…" and he spoke quickly as he explained his plan. I must say, not all of it made sense to me, but then, I had vowed to follow his orders on this mission, and they don't call him the best tactical officer in the fleet for nothing. Or so I hoped.

"Not a sound," he hissed just as the first loud banging noises could be heard against our hatch.

"Shoot anyone who opens this bench," were his last words before he slammed down the lid.

I found myself lying crumpled up in the dark trunk, hugging the osmium to my chest.


	6. Chapter 6 - Reed

Chapter 6: Reed 

As soon as I slammed the lid on him and sat on the bench, I was wondering if I expected too much of the poor doctor. What I asked him to do would task even one of my security crew, but in the brief minutes before our vessel was captured, this was the best I could come up with. The priorities were clear: the osmium must be saved first, as more than a hundred lives depended on its timely delivery. Phlox's life came a close second. No doubt the good doctor would agree with me on the former, but would probably argue on the latter point.

A sizzling sound from outside told us that the enemy in the cargo hold were trying to cut through our hatch with a phase torch.

"Open the hatch," I shouted at Earhart, who was standing ready holding that odd pistol of hers. I had planned to ask her to let me examine it, but there was no time for that now.

"Are you nuts?" she yelled back.

"If you don't open it, they will cut through it, and we can never get back into space with a hole in the hatch," I explained urgently.

That seemed to make sense to her. She put her hands on the hatch controls, but hesitated. "Fuck", she said, with feeling. The bench under me hopped a bit and I heard some muffled sounds from down there. I banged my fist on the lid. "Please, doctor, be still!" The bench grumbled but quieted.

I positioned myself on the other side of the hatch from Earhart, my phase pistol drawn. We exchanged a glance, and she hit the control. The hatch slid open.

For a few seconds, there was complete silence. Apparently, they hadn't expected us to open the door for them.

"Come out," a voice called, and the tinny sound of it revealed that the speaker was using a translator device.

Earhart yelled back a rather colourful reference to the size of our captors' reproductive organs, which the translator outside faithfully rendered into what I assumed was Nausicaan. There were some guffaws and some chuckles. She seemed to be itching to put up a fight, but there was no question in my mind that sooner or later we would be overwhelmed. From the voices outside I guessed there were at least seven or eight of them. We were clearly at a disadvantage.

My wild, foolish plan rather necessitated that we leave _Amazon_ , to draw the enemy away from the osmium and from Phlox. One of us had to reopen the cargo bay doors, to give Phlox a chance to escape. I caught Earhart's glance and nodded back to the bench that contained the good doctor. She followed my gaze, then looked back at me. I thought she understood. She narrowed her eyes, clearly unhappy, but she nodded.

"Emerge! Last chance, thou soft-footed limproots," the translator outside blared. I could only assume that being soft-footed and limp-rooted were not considered flattering attributes among Nausicaans.

There was nothing else to be done. If we didn't come out, they would come in, even if it took blowing apart our craft, and that was the one thing we had to avoid. I transferred my phase pistol to my left hand and pulled a stun grenade out of my jumpsuit. With a bit of luck, that would take care of most of them - if I aimed right and if they were standing close enough together.

I took a deep breath and jumped out of the hatch.


	7. Chapter 7 - Earhart

Chapter 7: Earhart

The man had balls, I give him that. With a wild glint in his eyes, rifle slung across his shoulder, a phase pistol in one hand and one of those grenade things in the other, he flung himself out the hatch. I ventured a quick glance and saw Reed skitter down the ramp feet first, take out the nearest Nausicaan with a shot from his phase pistol, roll the grenade towards a group of them like he was at the bowling alley, and then sprint and jump for cover behind some cargo containers which were secured against the far wall – all smooth, compact energy; moving like a champion Jack Russell at an agility tournament. The grenade went off with a loud _whopp_ and a flash, and three of the brutes wilted to the deck, expressions of surprised stupidity on their ugly faces. A fourth was hit marginally. He staggered, half-stunned, and I aimed and finished him off with my pistol.

There were four more of them, and as soon as Reed flew out of the hatch, they scattered and lunged behind various objects around the cargo bay. I saw a glint of blue among them and took a double-take – an Andorian! Now, that was odd. What was an Andorian doing among Nausicaans? And this vessel – I had seen its type before – was of Nausicaan cargo design, clumsy, slow and crude, like its crew. It could maybe go warp one, tops, which is the speed we were traveling at when we were captured. Normally, a vessel such as this one would transport stuff from Nausicaa to their two inhabited moons and back, but would have little occasion to venture further into space. It could be landed on the planet or loaded up in space, with its cargo bay wide enough to admit small vessels and double as a launch bay. All cargo was secured behind nets or in containers bolted to the walls, so that it wouldn't get sucked into space when the bay depressurized. Nausicaan pirates typically use smaller, faster vessels that they steal from others, and they rarely bother with small fish like _Amazon_.

And now we had an Andorian. Andorians and Nausicaans wouldn't normally be caught dead together in the same graveyard, which made me suspect that this could only mean one thing: someone blabbed. Somehow this Andorian had found out about the osmium and had secured himself some Nausicaan cronies to make a profit.

I figured Reed had most likely come to the same conclusion. He was firing a barrage of rifle shots at the spots where the Andorian and the remaining Nausicaans had disappeared. He had them pinned down so well that they managed only one or two badly-aimed shots in return. I thought about throwing one of those grenades – they sure looked like fun – but the targets were too widely scattered now. It would take a grenade for each of them, and that would most likely knock out everyone in the cargo hold, including us.

"The doors," Reed yelled at me between shots, and I knew what he meant.

There was a small booth off to my right, and if this cargo bay was like any other, it would be pressurized separately and the controls to the door mechanism would be in there. I was closer than Reed, and he was in a good position to provide cover. That meant it had to be me.

I said something rude to the empty air and made a run for it.

I heard Reed's phase rifle discharge as I ran, shot after shot. Some kind of projectile fired from a Nausicaan weapon hit the deck near my feet, throwing up sparks. The control booth was maybe 30 meters away, but I think I just might have broken the middle-aged-alcoholic-in-a-nightgown's intergalactic record for that distance.

I slipped inside and locked the door behind me. I bent over the controls, frantically trying to identify the cargo door mechanism among the alien characters. That one! A large blue button; I hit it and a loud blaring siren went off in the cargo hold, warning that the bay was about to be depressurized. Blue lights began to flash above the doors. How long till they opened? A minute, two?

Another blue flash at the periphery of my vision made me look up. The Andorian was out in the open. He was throwing his weapon to one of his buddies and ran toward the open hatch of _Amazon_. Where was Reed? Why wasn't he firing? I didn't see him behind his container. Maybe he had moved, or had been hit, or maybe the power cell in his rifle had run dry?

The Andorian jumped through the hatch into my ship, and there was Reed again, firing from his hide-out, this time with a phase pistol. I heard him yell, "Now, Phlox!" just as he charged out from behind his cover and ran, firing like a wild man. He needed help. I threw open the door of the booth and fired with my pistol towards where those limp-rooted ass hats where hiding. Where was the Andorian? Was he still in my ship? For a moment I hoped Reed would make it into _Amazon_ , but he was too late, her hatch was already closing.

Reed reached the booth and I sealed the door behind us, just as the cargo bay doors yanked open and the atmosphere escaped from the bay with an explosive sigh. A slamming hatch in the side wall of the cargo bay told me that the remaining Nausicaans had made their escape just in time. The last I saw were a pair of feet being dragged through that hatch; it appeared that at least one of the stunned Nausicaans had been deemed worthy of rescue by his sweetheart buddies. The others were not so lucky. When the air whooshed out of the bay, so did their bodies. I saw them cartwheeling out into space.

I hate Nausicaans – who doesn't, really – but the sight of that almost made me sick.

Talking of sights, I looked at Reed. He was panting hard, holding his phase pistol. There was a graze from some kind of projectile weapon across his upper arm, bleeding down his sleeve. I didn't think he had even noticed yet. His hair was all over the place, and his face was fierce. Five foot eight or not, he looked like a warrior. We exchanged a glance, and I knew we were both thinking the same thing. We had done what we could.

It was up to that quirky Denobulan doctor now…


	8. Chapter 8 - Phlox

Chapter 8: Phlox

Oh dear. Oh my. I hadn't been joking when I told Lieutenant Reed that I was accustomed to roughing it. I have been a doctor in the heat of combat, working to save savaged bodies even as weapons fire exploded all around my head. But to lie wedged into some trunk in the dark, helpless and sworn to inactivity as I listened to the sounds of battle around me – this situation was all but intolerable.

There was phase pistol fire and discharges of other kinds of weapons that I did not recognize. My insides clenched with worry for my crewmates, but at one point I thought I heard Lieutenant Reed's voice, shouting something about doors. Then there was more weapons fire, and finally, a loud siren.

In his hasty instructions before he slammed the lid on me, Mr. Reed had explained that there would almost certainly be some kind of alarm seconds before the bay doors reopened. That was my signal.

It took a second or two to extract my arms from where they were crumpled around my body. I was still holding the phase pistol in one hand and the osmium in the other, and was about to push open the bench's lid with my elbows, when it opened all by itself, and I was staring into the surprised face of….. an Andorian!

'What a pretty shade of blue', a distant part of me admired, just as I pulled the trigger. In my surprise, I hadn't aimed too well, but the stun charge grazed the side of his head, and down he went. I had given the man a good little burn on his temple, and no doubt he would have a fabulous headache and several other neurological symptoms when he awoke, which hopefully wouldn't be too soon.

"Now, Phlox," I heard Lieutenant Reed shout from the bay. Even as I stumbled over the Andorian's prone body, my mind registered with great relief that the good Lieutenant was still alive, while simultaneously panicking that I might not get to the hatch in time. But just as I hit the control and the hatch slid shut, the rumble of the cargo bay doors and the tell-tale rushing sound told me that the bay was depressurizing. I had hoped, as had Lieutenant Reed, that one or both of my companions might make it back into _Amazon_ in time. Unfortunately, I was on my own, not counting my prone Andorian friend who was unlikely to be any help in what had to follow.

I could only hope that my companions had been able to find a safe place in time.

The next part was the crucial one. Lieutenant Reed had imparted upon me the importance of acting swiftly, as no doubt the Nausicaans would attempt to close the cargo bay doors again at any moment. My task was to steer _Amazon_ out of the alien ship, go immediately to warp and head back to _Enterprise_. The communication system had been damaged by the energy bolt that shut down our engine when we were captured, but hopefully the damage was down to only a blown wire or two, and I was to do my best to repair it and send a distress call, 'secrecy be buggered', as Mr. Reed had so eloquently put it.

I sat in the pilot's seat and studied the controls. During my long career, I had been a passenger in many a shuttle of every possible design, but I had never found myself in a situation where I had to do the piloting myself. Still, I am observant and quite clever, if I do say so myself, and had a fairly good idea which controls served which function.

After all, as my human crewmates would say, how hard could it be, hmm?


	9. Chapter 9 - Reed

Chapter 9: Reed

For someone who was most likely unaccustomed to hands-on battle I must admit she had handled herself admirably, displaying all the right reflexes and the cool head under fire that I appreciate in any tactical crewman under my command. And despite being about as awkward and gangly as a female moose, she could move with surprising speed. The vision of her sprinting across the deck, barefoot in her nightgown, floppy breasts slapping against her chest, is one I shall not soon forget.

But now, as the adrenaline rush of battle ebbed, her eyes slowly widened and her whole face sort of sat down, as if only now it went home that she found herself trapped on a hostile vessel, with her own ship about to be piloted out of its hold by a virtual stranger.

I had seen that blasted Andorian jump into _Amazon_. Our dear doctor might have an aversion to inflicting pain – bless his kind heart – but I could only hope that his instinct for self-preservation prevailed and he had employed that phase pistol I gave him. What the presence of an Andorian among these Nausicaan pirates meant had to be sorted out later, but I feared that our little mission wasn't quite as secret as we had assumed. Which made it all the more crucial that Phlox would be able to escape and summon help. I didn't give a wet fuck any more if all of Andoria found out and got their antennae in a twist over this, and apparently at least one of them already knew anyway. Let the diplomats sort out the aftermath. Surely the lives of over a hundred children were worth a little 'diplomatic incident' or two.

And so, Earhart and I stood in the sealed-off control booth and stared at _Amazon_ , as if we could will Phlox and the precious osmium to safety.

"Come on, doctor," I pleaded, "start the bloody engine!" And just on cue, _Amazon's_ small rear nacelles lit up, and through the deck underneath our feet we felt the vibration of her thruster engines engaging.

When the grapplers had dragged _Amazon_ through the doors, she had been oriented sideways, with her port side pointing towards the doors. In order to steer her into space, the doctor would have to engage the starboard thrusters to rotate her ninety degrees to point her bow out into space, and then add the port thrusters to propel her forward to freedom – a manoeuvre that any experienced pilot would perform without thinking, as easy as emptying a hypospray might be to a starship's Chief medical officer.

Well, that was the theory anyway.

As we watched, _Amazon_ began to hover as her underbelly thrusters engaged – good job so far, Phlox – and then, slowly, began to rotate. But she turned the wrong way, her bow swinging into the bay, not out.

Earhart was gesticulating next to me. "Starboard! Starboard!" she yelled, as if there was any chance Phlox could hear her inside _Amazon_. Then, suddenly, the small vessel leapt forward, crashing her nose into the cargo bay wall just next to our control booth. We both ducked reflexively, and Earhart groaned as if in pain. For a fleeting moment, we had a glimpse of poor Phlox's panicked face through the front window, and then _Amazon_ started spinning in place like a merry-go-round on overload when the good doctor apparently threw the port thruster to full throttle. Earhart was yelling unladylike things, her hands in her hair. Phlox's ashen face whizzed past our booth two or three times as _Amazon_ spun around, until there was a great orange flash when some cargo containers on the far wall exploded – apparently Phlox had found the laser gun – and the recoil of the explosion pushed her stern-first through the doors into space. "Yes!" Earhart yelled, pumping a fist in the air, "Now hit the gas pedal, you daft quack!"

But either the 'daft quack' – not that I agreed the doctor was either of those things – couldn't find the warp drive, or it had been damaged by the energy surge that had shut it down when we were captured, because the little vessel just hung in space outside the cargo bay doors, still dizzily rotating to starboard.

"Impulse, Phlox, anything!" Earhart pleaded, "or get out and push. Just move!" But it was too late. A rending yank told us that the grapplers on either side of the bay door had been reemployed. We saw the powerful claws shoot towards _Amazon_ at the end of their cables, one missing her but the other grabbing solidly onto her port nacelle. At the same time, Phlox apparently found the impulse drive, but too late, too late – exactly as had happened before, when we were captured, the small vessel strained at the end of the cable like a rebellious puppy trying to escape the leash, but was mercilessly pulled back into the cargo bay.

She was off-centre due to being pulled by only one grappler, and she hit the bay doors on her way in, putting a huge dent in one of them, then skittered into the bay lying on her port side, digging a furrow that shot cascades of sparks across the metal deck. With a stutter, the damaged cargo bay doors began to pull shut again. I frantically hacked at the controls, but we were shut out. One of the Nausicaans must be overriding us from the bridge. With an ominous thud, the doors closed, and once again, _Amazon_ was trapped.

Earhart said something very colourful.

My plan had been desperate, bold – and probably foolish. And we had both just discovered the fatal flaw in it. Apparently the education of Denobulan doctors did not include basic pilot training. I saw Earhart close her eyes and guessed she was kissing her beloved vessel good-bye. Oh, and probably her arse, too.

 _Amazon's_ starboard hatch flew open, straight up into the air, since she had come to rest on her port side. An ashen-faced Phlox climbed laboriously out of the opening. Right behind him emerged one pissed-off looking Andorian with a nasty burn on his temple, one antenna hanging at half mast, pointing my phase pistol at Phlox's back. Ah, bollocks, but at least the doctor had got off one good shot. Or maybe not so good a one, since a slight graze such as the one the Andorian sported would have most likely resulted in the man waking up sooner than could normally be expected. That was probably the reason he now had the phase pistol.

The Andorian, who appeared a bit uncertain on his pins, was gesturing Phlox across the bay. The doctor didn't seem to be injured, thank goodness, but he did walk oddly. He isn't the most graceful individual at the best of times, but he doesn' t normally …waddle. Maybe he had been knocked about during his turbulent little excursion and was a bit sore.

Well, a good tactical officer knows when he's beaten. The game was over. Earhart and I were trapped in our little booth, and no doubt we would be collected next. Already four Nausicaans, weapons in hand, were striding across the bay towards us. I expected they would cut or blow open the door of the booth to get us out.

If I had been alone, I might have taken my chance fighting, counting on my reflexes to get ahead of these plodding brutes, or else go out putting on a good show. But I had Earhart and Phlox to consider, and I wasn't willing to risk their lives on a last desperate stunt. For now, the best strategy seemed to let ourselves be captured uninjured, and hope that later, with a bit of luck, another opportunity for escape would present itself. And so I stuck my phase pistol back in my jumpsuit and signaled Earhart to holster her gun, which she did with a resigned growl and a dark glare. Then I opened the door and stepped outside, hands held in the air.

A good tactical officer may never rely on luck, but if luck is all that is left, he sure knows how to take advantage of it when an opportunity presents itself. As it turned out, Lady Luck made her entrance sooner than I could have expected. Almost the instance I stepped out of the booth to meet our captors, the ear-splitting wail of the siren once again filled the cargo bay.

Our Nausicaan captors stopped dead in their tracks, looking around in confusion. Why would their mates on the bridge choose this moment to depressurize the bay? They were exchanging angry, confused shouts with the Andorian, who was holding up Phlox near the side hatch that led from the bay to the rest of the ship. In another moment, the reason became obvious as the foreboding groan of twisting metal issued from the top of the cargo bay doors. Up there, where Amazon had badly dented one of the doors during her recapture, the seal of the bay doors had been broken as the damaged upper edge no longer aligned with the grooves through which it slid during closure. A small gap had resulted which was gradually widening under the strain of the escaping pressure. Any second, the door was going to fail and fly out of its alignment.

In the confusion of the moment I saw our chance.

"Run!" I shouted to Earhart, while simultaneously crouching in the entry of the booth and opening phase fire at the Nausicaans. Bless the woman's reflexes, for once again she sprinted across the deck, night-gowned and barefoot, and in a few seconds had reached the hatch of her vessel.

I had stunned one of the Nausicaans, but the other three were now coming at me from different angles. "Get your ass in here, Reed! " I heard Earhart yell. But my arse wasn't going anywhere, as the remaining three enemies were upon me, crushing me under their weight.

I kicked, bit, and struggled, but each one of those ugly bastards was twice my size. The phase pistol was wrestled from my grasp.

I wasn't finished yet, though. I was able to deliver a lovely kick to some soft body parts, and one of the Nausicaans doubled over, moaning in agony. There was the flash of Earhart's pistol from the direction of _Amazon_ , and he went down all the way. A second one decided that he'd rather not become a space-floating popsicle when the bay doors busted open, and chose this moment to flee towards the exit hatch. But the remaining git had already hauled me to my feet, and I froze as I felt cold metal at my throat.

I squinted downwards to see his brawny hand holding the hilt of a huge, nasty looking dagger, the blade of which was cutting into my neck, ready to separate my head from the rest of me.

Earhart was looming halfway out of the upturned hatch of her ship, staring wide-eyed at my imminent decapitation. There was no way she could get a clean shot at the Nausicaan, who was holding me in front of his chest like a shield.

"Get the hell out of here," I croaked out, feeling the metal begin to bite into my throat as my captor's muscles tightened.

Instead of obeying, she lifted her pistol and aimed right at me.

She wasn't seriously going to shoot me with that thing, was she?

I had just finished the thought when there was a bright flash and an impact of sorts in the middle of my chest. A second later, my face was on the cold deck, and I found that I couldn't move a muscle below the neck.

"Bloody hell," I heard somebody sigh, and I closed my eyes, waiting for oblivion.


	10. Chapter 10 - Earhart

Chapter 10: Earhart

I love my paralyzer gun. It's a marvelous thing. I took it off a very old Ferengi in exchange for performing something he called 'oomox' – don't ask, it's disgusting, but I really wanted that gun. He claimed to have stolen it from a drunk Klingon who had found it inside the stomach of a giant lizard he hunted on some rogue jungle planet. It might have come halfway across the galaxy for all I know. No one knows who made it, and no one else has ever seen anything like it. What it does is paralyze all of your muscles below the neck, at least all the muscle attached to your bones that you normally control voluntarily. Which means you still function and breathe and control your bowels (thank the God of Alien Weaponry for that), but you're about as limp as a cooked noodle from the neck down until the effects wear off. Which takes an unpredictable amount of time, according to dosage and species.

Don't ask me how it works though. I managed to rig a charger to refresh its power cell, and it's been going steady for a couple years now. You see, if you're a woman on your own in my profession, you have to be able to defend yourself. And I like the idea of defending myself without actually sending anyone to cash in his chips. Murdering people has a way of getting back to you around here, and believe it or not, even rude and unwashed as I may be, I still count myself as a member of a civilized species, and killing for any other reason than immediate self-defense is really not my thing.

I myself have only been shot with it once, by none other than that _patakh_ Son of Kahless. I'd only been barely grazed, but it still knocked me flat for about two hours, while Borav ran off into the forest to have it out with that Klingon eyesore. Which wouldn't have been so bad, except that I spent those two hours with my face half submerged in a puddle of mud and targ shit. Like, Borav couldn't have checked on me and made sure I was comfortable and wasn't suffocating in a pile of alien excrement in the meantime. Said later there'd been no time for that. _Bullshit_ , I say. Seriously, how hard can it be to catch up with a fat, one-legged Klingon in a forest full of roots and fallen branches? I still owe Borav for that one. Well, at least he retrieved my paralyzer gun. He wouldn't give it back to me though, wanted to keep it. Claimed he had 'won it in a fair fight'. Puh. Bullshit again.

Of course, if you must know, I did get it back eventually, in a maneuver involving a bottle of my best vodka spiked with those little green pills you get on Risa, a turkey baster and a Vulcan defibrillator. But that's a story for another day.

Anyways, you're wondering about Reed.

Poor fellow went down like a sack of bricks when I shot him. I caught his shocked look as he collapsed and I regretted that there hadn't been any time to explain about my paralyzer gun. No doubt he was wondering if I had sprung a leak and was murdering him. Maybe for snoring like a congested rhino last night.

The Nausicaan who had been about to cut Reed's throat caught a residual effect from the shot, probably transferred through his captive's body. He plopped down on his ass with a grunt and sat there, wobbly, but still holding the knife. I finished him off with another shot. That was the mistake, though. The charge in my paralyzer can hold only so many shots, and I hadn't been shy about using it earlier. When the Andorian dragged Phlox backwards through the side hatch out of the cargo bay, all my gun could produce was a pitiful fizzle of sparks.

"I'm sorry, Phlox," I shouted.

"Go," he yelled back as the side hatch slammed shut behind him, "save Lieutenant Reed!"

That was the last I heard of him. The sirens were blaring, and any second now those big doors were going to bust and everything not nailed down in the bay would be sucked into space. I jumped from the hatch and ran to Reed, who lay crumpled a few yards away. His phase pistol was lying next to one of the stunned Nausicaans, and I grabbed it and stuffed it into my belt.

Now, Mr. Armory officer may have been on the runty side, but he was made of solid muscle. I managed to drag him underneath the hatch by his armpits, listening to him rant and order me to cut out the heroics and drop him on the spot and get the hell out of there myself. "Shut up," I told him, and then, don't ask me how, I got my shoulders underneath him and pushed, hauled, shoved, kicked and heaved his floppy ass through the hatch. He dropped into the _Amazon_ with a loud clatter like an armful of firewood, accompanied by some painful grunts and a sampling of vocabulary that would have blistered the wall paint off a Klingon harbor joint.

I dived in after him and closed the hatch, and then I was at the controls, engaging thrusters until _Amazon_ righted herself. Behind me, duffel bags, armory officers, Phlox's terrariums and what else were banging and rolling around as _Amazon_ regained her feet. I spent a passing thought on my beloved liquor collection; but as long as I had closed the cabinet door the bottles should be fine, as they rested in individual padded compartments that I had made for them. Things get turbulent in space, and one makes sure to protect one's treasures.

Poor Reed wasn't so lucky; I quickly turned my head to check on him, and saw he had come to rest face-down on the deck with my fetid old shag rug draped over his head and his limbs twisted around him. Muffled language emerged from under the rug, but I had to ignore him for now. The gap between the cargo bay doors had widened, and I saw the edge of the door quiver as more air from the bay rushed past it into space.

I wasn't going to wait around for Mount Sesame to open. Taking a deep breath, I engaged the rear thrusters and rammed _Amazon's_ nose into the door. It crumbled some more but still held. I backed up a bit, then rammed forward again. With a rending shriek, the door broke away, and in a rush of escaping air and Nausicaan bodies we were sucked into space. Immediately, I floored the impulse drive and put a few hundred klicks between us and the Nausicaan cargo vessel.

Reed was making some frantic noises, and I lifted the rug off his face so I could hear what he had to say.

"…distress call! Must call for help, we can't leave Phlox to their mercy! Can you repair communications?"

I crawled under my console to have a look, and fortunately, the damage came down to a couple of blown fuses in the circuit board, which I had replaced in a couple of minutes. Almost immediately, the comm channel crackled to life.

"….hear us, Softfoot, Floppybags! Foolish escape. Thine osmium for Denobulan roundgut. Be prompt, or delightful head removal! Answer! Answer!"

I figured if Reed was 'Softfoot', then the other one must be me. Well, I've been called worse. I did wonder at what back-alley flea market they got their translator, though. More likely they had stolen it from some hapless alien. The poor thing was sure taking a bite out of the English language.

"We can't give them the osmium," Reed ground out, sounding desperate. I didn't think we should do so either, and dear Doctor Roundgut would probably agree with us, but nor could we let them remove his head, no matter how 'delightful' they might think that would be.

"Ask them for proof that Phlox is unhurt. Hold them off, buy us some time. Send a distress call to _Enterprise_."

I opened the channel. "Let us talk to Phlox! No osmium until we know he is unhurt." I heard that shrill little translator chatter away in Nausicaan. There were some grunts and shouts, and then Phlox's clear, calm voice:

"Lieutenant, Miss Earhart, I am unhurt. Regardless of what they do to me, under no circumstances must you let them have the osmium. You must proceed to Tellar immediately. The timely delivery of the osmium is of utmost…."

There was more grunting and a commotion of sorts, and then Phlox's voice again, shouting from a distance: "…and please, do try and locate my Nublian newt. Her tank turned over and I'm afraid she will become desiccated rather quickly when she is out of water…."

A harsh Nausicaan voice cut him off, and the little translator chimed in again, sounding inappropriately cheerful, "Head chop, or osmium! Choose! Await reply."

After that, the channel cut off.

"Bloody hell," Reed grunted.

I knelt by his side and carefully straightened out his limbs, checking him over. "Are you hurt?"

"Don't think so, but I can't move a muscle. What the fuck did that blunderbuss of yours do to me?"

I explained it to him, while I laid down my rug and rolled Reed's limp body on top of it, so he'd have at least some comfort. I had a small first aid kit stored under my console, and I spent a few minutes cleaning the bullet graze on his upper arm and the small knife cut on his throat. Fortunately, neither appeared serious. The arm wound was a bit deeper, so I wrapped a bandage around it after I disinfected it. He had his head turned away from me, but when I was done, he gave me a tight little smile. "Thank you," he said.

I nodded. He was still looking at me with those pale eyes of his. "You should have left me in the cargo bay," he said, his voice sounding clipped. "If those doors had blown any sooner, you would be dead now and the osmium would be lost. You endangered both your life and the mission by coming after me."

"You're welcome," I said solemnly.

He smiled a bit more, and there was some warmth in it this time. It lasted only a moment, though, and then he looked away again. "How long till I get my body back?"

"I have no idea," I told him, which was the truth. With a direct hit like the one he got, I've seen it take anywhere from six hours to two days. "You'll get those little muscle twitches in your arms and legs when control starts coming back. Probably be at least half a day or so."

He groaned and closed his eyes. "Bloody marvelous."

"What do we do now?" I asked him. It seemed to me that we were having ourselves a neat little standoff with the Nausicaans. They had Phlox, we had the osmium. We had destroyed their cargo bay, so they couldn't capture us again. They no doubt had superior weapons, but _Amazon_ could outrun them if they tried to come at us, now that they no longer had the advantage of surprise.

"Have you sent a distress call?" Reed asked.

I had, indeed – but not to _Enterprise_. Reed might think he was Mr. Tactical Officer In Charge At All Times, but this was still my vessel and I had my own ideas about just who could help us out of this mess. Captain's privilege. Almighty Starfleet could come in here guns blazing, but what did they know about Nausicaans, really? Once _Enterprise_ arrived on scene, those dumb thugs would likely just panic, and I feared in that case Phlox's head wouldn't last another ten seconds on his shoulders. No, I figured this needed the experienced touch of someone who has kicked at least a few dozen Nausicaan butts in his time. Even though he'd never let me hear the end of it.

Reed chewed his lip. "We must hold them off until we get help. As long as they think there might be a chance we'll agree to exchange the osmium for Phlox, they won't harm the doctor." After a dark pause, he added quietly, "Or at least, they won't kill him."

For a few unpleasant seconds, we probably both imagined just what those ugly villains might do to poor Phlox. One hears stories, and it can make your skin crawl. I'd only known Phlox for less than a day, and we had barely talked, but my instincts told me that he was a kindly man and not short on courage. I kinda liked him, despite the fact he'd almost wrecked my ship.

I'd watched the way Reed and Phlox interacted. They seemed a bit formal with each other, suggesting they weren't close friends. And yet, the two of them sure looked out for one another. Reed's entire crazy, hasty escape plan had been about the hope that Phlox might be able to get away along with the osmium, even if it meant sacrificing his own life. (Oh, and mine, but never mind that). And dear Phlox, at the moment of his capture, only had thoughts for Reed's and my own safety – heck, he was even worried about his newt – and now here was Reed again, fretting himself sick over what the Nausicaans might do to the doctor.

Maybe that's the sort of thing they teach them at Starfleet, to value the life of the other more than your own. Then again, it might be the kind of thing you can't really teach anybody. It could be nice, I guess, having someone who looks out for you like that.

Years ago, when I first thought I might like to go into space, I had actually thought about applying to Starfleet myself, if you can believe such a thing. But I never did. I figured an outfit like that would be all yes sir, no sir, following orders, sir, may I polish your boots, sir, and I didn't quite see how a wild, unkempt thing like me could fit in with all that ass-kissing. I probably would've gotten chucked out on insubordination before I got through the first semester at their academy. I'm kind of a loner, I guess. I operate best on my own.

"Where is the osmium?" Reed suddenly said, sounding worried, "show it to me."

I rooted through the storage bench Phlox had been hiding in, then through the other one. I opened all the duffel bags, crawled under the console, checked my bunk room and the toilet, even my liquor cabinet. There was no osmium. I did find the Nublian newt, though. The little thing had found the only other wet place in my vessel, bless its slimy little heart, and was staring accusingly up at me out of the toilet bowl. I restored it to its aquarium with a pitcher of toilet water, and then I broke the news to Reed.

"The osmium is not on board."

He blinked up at me from the rug. "How can that be?"

I shrugged. None of the Nausicaans had been inside _Amazon_ , only that Andorian, and it didn't look like he'd had the osmium when he emerged. That left only one possibility. Reed and I came to the inevitable conclusion at about the same time.

"Bloody hell! What were you thinking, Phlox?" Reed said to the ceiling.

I was wondering the same, but something didn't make sense to me. "But if Phlox took the osmium with him, why did he tell us not to let them have it and to go immediately to Tellar?"

Reed looked at me as if I was a dimwit. "Because obviously they don't yet know that he has it." He sighed and closed his eyes. "And that was Phlox's way of telling us that we must get it back at all costs."

I remembered now. 'Regardless of what they do to me', the doctor had said when they let him speak over the com. There they went again, those two. All this spirit of self-sacrifice floating around; how was I going to keep up with that?

Reed had turned his head away from me; the poor guy looked like he might be sick. I felt for him. He had intended to sacrifice himself (oh, and me, too, but I won't mention that) in order for Phlox and the osmium to get away, and here we were, having somehow mucked it up so bad that we had actually achieved the exact opposite.

I plopped down in the pilot's chair and raked my hands through my hair. There wasn't much to do at this point but to wait for our distress call to be answered.

 _Hang in there, Phlox, help is coming_ , I thought.

 _And hurry your hairy old ass over here, Borav. We need you._


	11. Chapter 11 - Phlox

Chapter 11: Phlox

Oh dear. What a muddle. Or, to borrow one of Mr. Reed's frequent pronouncements when waking up in my sickbay, "bleeding hell."

In hindsight, it would have been better had I left the osmium where it was.

During my ham-fisted attempt to pilot to safety, I had stored the osmium under the bench, along with the phase pistol I had used to put my Andorian visitor to sleep. But when we tumbled back into the cargo bay during our recapture, I turned around to discover that the Andorian was awake, lopsided but ambulatory, and pointing the phase pistol at me. I also saw the thermos flask containing the osmium on the floor, where it had rolled during the chaos when our vessel was upended. During a brief moment when my Andorian captor was overcome with nausea, as people recovering from a stun charge frequently are, I managed to quickly slip the osmium down my tunic.

At the time it had seemed like the right thing to do, because I assumed _Amazon_ was about to be boarded by the Nausicaans and thoroughly searched. I thought it appropriate to make a last desperate effort to keep the osmium out of our captors' hands. Of course, I had not anticipated that my companions would be able to regain our vessel and escape, although I was certainly delighted to know they were safe.

But now I had created a bigger problem by taking the osmium with me. No doubt Lieutenant Reed would be very cross with me for this tactical blunder. I deeply regretted that I had failed the good man. He had asked a simple thing of me – to pilot the vessel out of the cargo hold – and I had managed to make an utter mess out of his escape plan.

As my kidnappers prodded me along into the depth of their vessel, I found myself in agreement with Mr. Reed that my insistence on being present on this mission had been reckless and foolhardy.

I was taken straight to the bridge, where I was roughly shoved onto a seat and guarded by a particularly unattractive villain with a lethal looking projectile weapon and a leering smirk on his warty face that gave me, as Commander Tucker might put it, the "heeber jeebers".

There was quite a commotion among my captors, with a great deal of shouting and shoving. They appeared to blame each other for their botched adventure. There were four of them left, in addition to the lone Andorian, who stood off to the side with his arms crossed in front of him and a decidedly queasy expression on his face. He was still holding Mr. Reed's phase pistol in one hand. No doubt he was also still experiencing the aftermath of that stun charge I inflicted on him. Well, I daresay it served him right.

I could not understand a word of their shouting, of course, as they had turned off their translator device. There seemed to be mainly anger and disappointment at having missed out on the osmium, but I perceived no sign of grief and regret. After all, four or five of their number – I had lost count during the mayhem in the cargo bay – had perished when they were sucked out into space. One had to conclude that friendship and empathy did not rank very highly among these gentlemen.

It is an unfortunate thing that Nausicaans are known around the galaxy mainly in their capacity as pirates and miscreants, reputed to stir up trouble wherever they appear. But surely, a species that has achieved space travel must have built some kind of civilization on their home world. There must be Nausicaan doctors there, or school teachers, or farmers, or scientists and even artists. As I watched these thugs try to bust each other's heads in, presumably over the question of what to do with their Denobulan hostage, I made a resolution. Should I survive this unpleasant adventure, I would exercise my influence within the Interspecies Medical Exchange to reach out to the Nausicaan homeworld, to see if there might be any physicians among them who are willing to stretch their knowledge beyond their home planet, and to share their own.

The Andorian suddenly shouted a few words and banged his fist onto one of the consoles. The quarreling Nausicaans shut up and glowered at him, and then separated and sat at various stations around the bridge. It would seem that the blue fellow was in some position of authority, although judging by the challenging looks and displeased grunts he received it was a very tenuous position at best.

Communications with _Amazon_ were established, and I was briefly allowed to speak to my crewmates. Knowing how thorough Lieutenant Reed is in such matters, he would undoubtedly soon discover that the osmium was gone, and draw the appropriate conclusion that I had it on my person. I hoped my message would make it clear that the lives of the Tellarite children had to remain his first priority, and that there was no further time to be wasted in getting the osmium to Tellar. By whatever means he and Miss Earhart conspired to retrieve the osmium, I hoped they would not be stalled by any concerns for my safety. I had certainly done enough damage to this mission, as it were.

A stretch of time passed in unpleasant silence, interrupted only by the occasional verbal spat between the Nausicaans. I was not sure whether they had given Lieutenant Reed and Miss Earhart any kind of ultimatum for the delivery of the osmium, but I did recall clearly that the alternative outcome was to be the 'delightful' removal of my head. And while I did not entirely share my kidnappers' joyful anticipation of this procedure, I did not really believe that it was likely to happen as long as they continued to assume the osmium was still on the other ship.

However, I had a more immediate problem than simple head removal. The big Nausicaan grunt who was closely guarding me was increasingly taking a rather uncomfortable interest in my person. His stare had become more and more lecherous as it slithered up and down my body. Occasionally, he would make a gruff remark of sorts while ogling some part of my anatomy, which would earn him some chortles from the round of his comrades, who were all looking on with interest.

It didn't take long before he put his hands on me. He reached up to pinch my cheek, of all things, and I told him in my politest Denobulan to go and insert his reproductive organ into a hive of triple-headed fire roaches. He grunted something and waved to his friends. The little translator was produced and set in front of me, and my suitor waved his gun in my face and nodded encouragingly. I surmised that I was being asked to repeat myself, so I told him that surely, his dear mother had exhibited questionable taste when she chose to copulate with a particularly hairy Carixian mud yak. The translator translated, and after a brief frown my Nausicaan broke into a rumble of laughter, followed by the others around the bridge.

My, but these fellows loved a good insult.

Next, he was wedging his projectile gun between his thighs so that the nozzle protruded from his crotch. He poked rudely at my chest, then nodded downwards, encouraging me to admire the arrangement. His friends in the background were egging him on with grunts and all manner of monkey noises. I told him that I had seen better armed pixie moths, and that I doubted he had enough ammunition in there to shoot a hole through a slice of cheese. The translator had some difficulty with that one, but as it prattled away, the leer on my new friend's face slowly flattened out.

This signaled the end of our foreplay. Suddenly, he lunged forward and grabbed me. In a second, he had yanked my tunic from my shoulders down to my waist and I felt his rough hands under my shirt, on the skin of my torso, groping and moving downwards. I shuddered and braced myself for the worst.

Among Denobulans, who regard intimate encounters as a primary expression of civilized discourse, the idea of forcing sexual advances on another person is simply unthinkable. And unnecessary, as it were, since on Denobula you can easily find a willing partner any time the urge should overcome you while going about your daily activities. My crewmates on Enterprise have occasionally pointed out that they found it contradictory that a species as hedonistic as Denobulans should dislike casual touch. But that is, of course, the very reason: there can be no such thing as casual touch on a planet where any kind of physical contact inevitably leads to copulation. Crewman Cutler once likened Denobulans to bonobos, an Earth species of primates who copulate cheerfully and frequently – by way of saying hello, so to speak.

Well, it must have been a while for this Nausicaan fellow, because his exertions were clumsy and urgent, lacking any kind of refinement. It occurred to me to struggle, but it was clear there would be no chance to escape him, and I feared that further resistance on my part would only cause his advances to become more violent. Instead, I wriggled and squirmed somewhat and gave him my best Denobulan grin, trying to divert his attention away from my nether parts – but it was too late; his hands were already there.

It is a well known fact throughout the galaxy that Denobulans are rather terrifically well endowed compared to males of most other species, if I do say so myself. Even so, my Nausicaan admirer's eyes widened in surprise when his probing hand encountered the very stiff cylindrical object in my underwear.

I had hoped that my rather corpulent physique and my tendency to hide the same under wide, flowing tunics would effectively keep the osmium from view. Although, admittedly, my gait had suffered a bit due to the heavy flask hanging between my legs, but then again, these Nausicaans may not be familiar with the customary grace of the average Denobulan, and, I had hoped, would think nothing amiss.

But all that was academic now that the Nausicaan slowly pulled the osmium flask from my underpants. His brutal face wore an expression of profound puzzlement, which slowly changed to recognition and finally, to delight. His comrades had approached and gathered round him, staring and issuing shouts of surprise, and in another instant the flask was passed from hand to hand amidst a chorus of excited voices. Soon, they were shoving each other again, and one of them, the big brute who had fingered me, was about to open the lid when the Andorian (who had watched from the sidelines up until now) raised his voice again and stepped into the melee, holding the phase pistol. He snatched the osmium from the big Nausicaan's hands and barked out a few quick sentences, issuing orders. The Nausicaans obeyed grudgingly, and in a moment they were back at their stations. I felt the vessel go to warp, presumably speeding off towards Nausicaa, now that they had what they came for.

The Andorian sat down near me, the osmium by his feet and the phase pistol and a glowering stare trained on his crew. He looked tired and sick; the phase burn on his temple was weeping and swollen. Clearly, inflammation had set in, possibly even the early stages of infection. Under better circumstances, he would have benefited from the secretions of my Nublian newt, followed by the topical application of a Regulan bloodworm or two. His Nausicaan associates were throwing dark looks in his direction, no doubt eager for him to pass out so they could snatch away the osmium and sample its delights.

I am not a fool. I understood that my usefulness as a hostage had come to an abrupt end when they found the osmium. But now that there was nothing else to be lost, I was determined to fight. I mentally reviewed my limited knowledge of Nausicaan anatomy as well as hours of Lieutenant Reed's mandatory hand-to-hand combat classes for the senior staff. I had always been rather uninterested in attending those; no less uncooperative, I blush to admit, than the good Lieutenant himself tends to be when confined to my sickbay. But now, facing what I believed would be my last stand, I wished I had paid better attention. Not that I deluded myself into thinking I would last more than a few seconds, but one has one's pride.

When one of the Nausicaans rose from his station and came towards me, a predatory smirk on his face, I readied myself to administer at least one good kick to the sensitive neural plexus of his groin area.

He grinned toothily at me, pulling out a huge knife and waving it in front of me. My eyes were transfixed on the knife and I wondered how many necks other than mine had been severed with it. He grabbed me by the hair and yanked back my head. I closed my eyes and, I have to admit to my shame, all the fight went out of me like the air out of a punctured blowfish. This was the end. There were shouts and grunts from the others, but my mind barely registered them.

 _By all the spirits of Denobula and my dear and noble ancestors who went before me, may I be forgiven for all my transgressions. Here I come_.

But it didn't happen. The hand in my hair was roughly pulled back, and suddenly there were angry voices. I opened my eyes and saw that a second Nausicaan – the one who had earlier taken such an interest in my physical attributes – had inserted himself between myself and my executioner and was apparently arguing furiously for my preservation. Numb with fear, I could only watch as the Andorian and the others joined in the argument, all of them gesticulating and shouting and, some of them, waving daggers.

In the end, my defender apparently won out, for he turned to me triumphantly, grabbed me by the chin and planted a rough kiss right on my lips. His mouth tasted of rotting meat and I could feel the warts on his face dig into my cheeks. He petted my face again and then went back to his station, not before reaching down and delivering a comradely squeeze to my privates, which made me squeal in surprise and dismay. The other one, who had wanted to carry out the promised head removal, withdrew as well, grumbling and sheathing his knife. The Andorian, looking quite ill by now, sank back into the chair next to me, the osmium flask on the floor between his feet and the stolen phase pistol in his lap.

The bridge fell quiet again, and I was left shaking and dizzy, wondering what on Denobula had just transpired. I could only conclude that it had been decided to keep me around for a while longer so that I might provide some entertainment during whatever festivities would commence after they reached their destination. I found myself grateful that these Nausicaans had at least a rudimentary concept of delayed gratification, as they had apparently decided that the fun and games would have to wait until they reached the safety of their home planet.

I was dimly aware of a short exchange with _Amazon_ over the comm, during which I heard Miss Earhart's angry voice demanding my release. She was answered with raucous laughter.

I had been granted a stay in execution, though hardly a pardon. But where there is life, there is hope, and already my mind was busy searching for ways to improve my long-term prognosis. An idea came to me, and for the following hours, while the Nausicaan vessel sped towards my doom, I waited, with hope and patience, for an opportunity to implement it.

And finally, during one perfect moment, when the Andorian was dozing and the Nausicaans were all focused on their stations, I casually reached over and loosened the screwtop on the thermos flask. It would take a while, but the quantity of powdered osmium in the flask should be sufficient to soon fill the bridge with osmium tetroxide vapors. All I had to do was wait.

My Nausicaan captors would soon enter a state of blissful intoxication, but I was afraid that the effect on the Andorian could be expected to be rather more severe. In a manner of minutes, my blue friend should experience pronounced dizziness and nausea, to be followed by intermittent seizures and, possibly, coma and death. And while I would sincerely regret that last outcome, I had to acknowledge that there were more important things at stake than the life of one Andorian malefactor who had, after all, brought his misfortune upon himself.

As I sat and waited, it occurred to me that I had all but forgotten about the presence of a third species on board this ship. I scanned my memory for any information on the effect of volatile osmium tetroxide on Denobulan physiology, but to my surprise, I came up blank. I shrugged to myself. Well, it would appear that I would be the first fortunate researcher to collect data on this fascinating question. What a wonderful opportunity! I must remember to write a paper about it.


	12. Chapter 12 - Earhart

Chapter 12 Earhart

Suddenly, without any warning, the Nausicaan ship had gone to warp.

I was immediately at the controls, activating my long range scanners.

"What's happening?" Reed called from the rug.

"They're leaving."

"Get after them!" he cried, but he didn't have to tell me. I was already on their tail. They were going warp 1.08, presumably their top speed, and the heading would take them straight to Nausicaa.

I turned to Reed "They're going home," I told him.

"That means they found the osmium." His face darkened with despair. "Phlox…," he breathed.

"Maybe…maybe they didn't…"

Reed shook his head. "I doubt they'll keep him alive for long now. Why would they?"

I could think of a few reasons, none of them all that preferable to decapitation.

"Stay on them," he said, "don't lose them. If they think we might be a threat, maybe they'll keep Phlox alive as a reassurance hostage."

I adjusted _Amazon's_ speed and position to follow just a few dozen kilometers in their wake, close enough to get their attention. And indeed, after a while the crackle of the comm channel announced that they had taken notice.

"Limproots! Pitiful failures! Go to thy nursery and suckle thy toes. Osmium no longer thine. Defeat!" The little translator sounded downright hysterical with glee.

"This is Floppybags, you assholes," I yelled back angrily. "Give us back our friend or I'll scorch your balls with my laser."

There was laughter, and then, "Thy laser would not heat our soup. Roundgut _our_ friend now. Go home, or head chop."

Reed and I exchanged a hopeful glance. Ah, so Phlox was still alive. Although 'Roundgut our friend now' didn't bode too well for the doctor's future prospects.

We agreed it was best to back off a bit and follow at a distance. I sent another distress call relaying our course change. If only we had more firepower, we might have a shot at taking them down and retrieving Phlox and the osmium, but that wouldn't happen until help arrived. Which could take quite a while longer.

We spent a couple of hours in silence, each left to our own thoughts. I set the autopilot to follow the other ship at a constant distance, then sat in the pilot seat and chewed off my fingernails. I was thinking I could really use a drink.

I turned a few times to check on Reed, who was lying stretched out on my rug, his jaw working, staring at the bulkhead. He looked comfortable enough, physically at least, although there were no signs of returning muscle control as yet. I knew he was beating himself to a pulp inside, over this botched mission and what might happen to Phlox, never mind those hundred-plus Tellarite children if the osmium was lost. Possibly, the Vulcans could be convinced to send more, but it would take time, and Phlox had made it clear that the majority of those kids would not survive unless they received treatment within a few days.

After a long period of silence, I heard Reed mumble under his breath, and then, quietly, "Bloody hell."

I was beginning to think that was his signature phrase.

I turned to look at him. "What's the matter?"

"Never mind," he clipped, but it was clear from the sour expression on him that he did mind something very much.

"Are you uncomfortable?" I asked, thinking a bit of kind concern might lighten his mood. "Uh…you want me to bring you a pillow…?"

"It's not that," he snapped.

I shrugged and turned my back on him. Let him suffer then, if he was going to be in a snit. He was quiet for a while after that, but then I heard him grunt and breathe something that sounded like "bollocks".

I turned and looked at him again. He met my eyes and I swear I saw a blush rise in his face.

His gaze dropped and he said quietly, "it's the tea."

"What tea?" I asked, flabbergasted.

"The tea I had for dinner," he snapped, all barbs and consonants again. "If you recall, I drank a rather large quantity."

I did recall. Three cups. This was a good three, four hours ago now. So what?

And then it suddenly dawned on me what he was trying to say. I sat up straight in alarm.

"If you pee on my rug, I'll throw you out the hatch," I blurted, instantly cursing my loose tongue. So much for making the man more comfortable.

"Bugger your bloody rug," Reed growled savagely. The man was on the edge, clearly.

"You can't hold it?"

He just gave me a murderous look. Well, I supposed that was too much to ask. It could be hours yet before the effects of the paralyzer wore off enough for him to drag himself to the can, and we both knew it.

After the effort it took to haul him in here, I didn't quite see myself hoisting sixty-five completely limp kilograms of pissed-off Englishman to the loo, propping him up in front of the bowl and aiming little Lord Malcolm for him while he…..oh…yes, but that was it, wasn't it? And right there, suddenly, the solution came to me. Yes! Brilliant. That should work.

I jumped off my seat. "Stay where you are," I told him unnecessarily, and headed for my liquor cabinet.

Sacrifices had to be made. It was either my bottle of Romulan ale or my carpet. Oh hell then, bottoms up! It had taken me a year to drink the first half of that bottle, and it took all of twenty seconds to drink the rest. It occurred to me then that I should have offered some of it to Reed – but on second thought, the man had other worries at the moment. I knew I'd pay for it though; Romulan Ale famously hits your blood stream with lightning speed. But first, I had a delicate job to do.

I dropped down to my knees at his side, waving the empty bottle in his face. "Your turn!"

Of course he complained a bit.

"Get your paws off me. This is completely inappropriate," spitting those p's at me like they were cherry pits. But I ignored him and went to work. I figured he'd be grateful enough when it was over.

I fumbled a bit with his zipper and then maneuvered his arms out of the jumpsuit. Reed was staring at the ceiling, those lines around his mouth all sharp and tight. Clearly, total helplessness was not his thing. I rolled the jumpsuit fabric past his torso, past his butt – yeah, nicely tight, that one – and down to his thighs, and then fumbled with the buttons of his black undershirt. The sights were already beginning to dip a bit before my eyes. And those buttons were way too small. Microscopic, impossible things. With a grunt, I just ripped his shirt open, sending the damn things flying around the cabin.

"Would you mind taking some care, that's Starfleet property," came a pissy voice. "And what the hell do you need to open my shirt for anyway? The object of interest is located a bit further south."

"Bugger your bloody Starfleet", I told him. I pushed up his shirt a bit and paused with my hands on his belly, admiring the firm muscles around his tight waist. He really wasn't badly put together, I thought as I ran my hands over his hip bones. Somebody harrumphed – oops, that would be Reed again. Yes, back to the job – further south – down went his blue underpants, over his butt – I did take a sweet moment to squeeze those lovely cheeks – and yep, there he was: the object of interest. Litty bitty Lord Malcolm.

I paused for a moment to have a look. Not so litty, actually. I shook my swimming head to clear it – alright, important job to do. To work then. Taking a deep breath, I took a firm grip of His Lordship with one hand and the bottle with the other. I think I heard Reed grunt. Or was that me? I focused. Or tried to, amidst the swirling. Now seriously, how hard could this be? Pretty hard, as it turned out. Rather like threading a needle while straddling the warp nacelle in the middle of an ion storm. It wasn't helped by the fact that Mr. Armory Officer was packing a surprisingly large caliber for such a small critter and that the neck of the bottle was rather, well, narrow. In hindsight, I should have used the Klingon blood wine, except that bottle had still been nearly full…

"For pity's sake, will you get on with it?" Reed snarled in the background. "And lighten your grip a bit, if you would? I may yet decide to have offspring in the future."

 _Blah, blah, blah_ , I thought in my swimming brain. I never liked it when they talked too much during sex. Like that huge oaf with the scars who belted out Klingon opera in the middle of the act. If you've never heard Klingon opera, think 'rutting season' on the prairies ….…..whoa, did I just say sex? Wait a moment, that wasn't what we were doing here. What again…..then why did I have a guy's dick in my hand? And a bottle in the other? …oh yeah… that time on Risa…. beach…. moonlight… when that fat little….

" _Bloody hell!_ Now, if you please!"

Alright, woman, focus! Thread that needle. I made one last heroic effort, and with a squelch, Litty went home. "Docking clamps engaged, Cap," I informed him triumphantly, and I think maybe I giggled.

And he went. And went. And went. That bottle held at least a liter, but here I was becoming worried. Just as I was contemplating which of my treasures I had to sacrifice next, he stopped. Just at the fill mark.

When I pulled him out, it made a bit of a plopping sound, and Reed let out a long breath, deflating like a big balloon.

"Goo' boy," I slurred, or at least I think that's what I said. Reed said something too, under his breath, but I didn't catch what. I petted him on the thigh and pulled his briefs back up, giving Litty one last friendly squeeze goodbye. Things were twirling, whirling, swirling, but I was still in control, absolutely, totally in control. I looked at the bottle. What a shame. Shame, shame, shame. Best get rid of it while I still had some coordination. I held the bottle by the neck with two fingers, climbed to my feet, and took it to the toilet. I was about to pour it where it belonged, when I had an idea. A brilliant idea. An absolute bloodyliciously magnificent genius idea. The kind of idea you only get with half a bottle of Romulan Ale inside you. So instead I just wiped it off real well, corked it back up and then restored it to my booze cabinet, arranging it just-so between the Kentucky bourbon and the Andorian ice liqueur. Ale a la Reed. Heh.

Things went a bit fuzzy then and I don't remember anything after that.


	13. Chapter 13 - Reed

Chapter 13: Reed

 _Bloody, bollocking, fuck-all, sodding hell!_ If this didn't beat any indignity I had ever suffered before in my life! At least the last time I had been flat on my back and unable to move a muscle, I had a smattering of broken bones to show for it and was pumped up with Phlox's happy juice to kill the pain. No such excuse this time. Hit with that bloody pea gun and dumped on this mangy shag rug that smelled like a Klingon jock strap and was probably infested with fleas and toe nail clippings. Any moment now my allergies were going to flare up like a supernova.

And Phlox! "Save Lieutenant Reed," he had cried as they dragged him away, and it cut me to the heart. It was _him_ I had wanted to be safe, him and the precious osmium, and somehow all had gone pear shaped and now I was lying here, as useless as road kill while Phlox had been the one to be captured.

The doctor had done the best he could – it was I who had failed him.

Kind, eccentric, goofy Phlox, who had saved my sorry arse a dozen times and who was respected and admired on multiple worlds for his vast knowledge and unwavering commitment to his patients – and I had made a fool of him by asking him to do the one thing he was unprepared for, to pilot an unfamiliar vessel out of a cargo hold. Whatever those wankers were doing to him over there, it would be on my conscience; I was in charge of this mission and I had cocked it up and possibly killed Phlox and lost the osmium in the process.

And if all that wasn't enough, my blasted bladder had to mutiny, so now here I was at the mercy of some giant drunk woman waving my block and tackle around like some kind of joystick in a shuttle flight simulator.

I'd known there was going to be trouble when she'd jumped off her seat and reappeared seconds later with a crooked grin on her face and a half-full bottle of some blue stuff in her hand, which she held up triumphantly. "Romulan ale," she'd declared, and I watched in dumbstruck fascination as she set the bottle to her lips and gulped down every last drop of it in one long, epic draught. Now, I've known some women who could hold their liquor, but this was without precedent.

After last year's Christmas party, Mayweather, Rostov, Tucker and I finished off a bottle of Romulan Ale which had been, oh, maybe two thirds full when we started on it. Even so, it took us all night, and when it was done all four of us were well and truly bladdered. I dimly remember that we had to carry Rostov to his quarters. I was still wondering how this heroic act of hers could possibly help my current predicament, when she dropped to her knees by my side, waved the empty bottle in front of my face and announced cheerily, "Your turn!"

At which point it dawned on me exactly what she had in mind. If I'd had my body, I would have scooted all the way across the deck. As it were, all I could do was lift my head an inch and hiss at her, "Oh no, you won't!"

But she bloody well did, didn't she?

"Docking clamps engaged, Cap!" she sang out after it was done, and if I'm honest, despite the absurdity of the situation, the feeling of immediate relief was exquisite – by that time, I must have been backed up all the way to my kidneys.

Phew. At least that was over with, and when she staggered off with the bottle, I was hoping very much I wouldn't see her again for a good long while. I heard her giggling and muttering to herself in the toilet and then there was some bumping and muffled sounds from her bunk. I was hoping she'd go to bed to sleep it off. I experimentally tried out my limbs, which had begun to quiver very slightly. A good sign probably, but all the movement I could muster so far was to shrug my shoulders and twitch my thigh muscles a bit.

I wasn't going to be so lucky. A movement of colour made me look up, and there she was again. She had doffed the nightgown and slipped her bony frame into a dress. Not just any dress, mind you. I was staring at a shade of radioactive green printed with large orange and pink turtles and hibiscus flowers: some kind of Hawaiian batik swoosh that would overshadow even the most seizure-inducing samples of a certain chief engineer's wardrobe. Just looking at it made me feel drunker than she must have been at this point.

She draped her long frame against the bulkhead in a pose I assume she thought was sensuous, but which was rather spoiled by the fact that she could barely keep her balance. Even from down on the rug I could tell that her pupils were very dilated.

"Hi there," she said smokily.

I swallowed. "Maybe you should go to bed."

"Nonsense," she breathed, "I'm jus' waking up." She swung her hips a little and almost fell over in the process. "D'you like my dress?"

"It's…very special," I ventured cautiously.

"Yes, isn't it?" she agreed happily. At this point, she tried to twirl around to show off the dreadful thing some more, but gravity finally got the better of her. She staggered and then plopped to her butt at my side.

"Whoopsa," she slurred and giggled. "I bought it on a class trip to Holo…Holunu…y'know, Hawaii, my senior year in high school. Tried to smuggle it past my ol' man when I got home." Her face darkened. "Ol' fart saw it though," she went on. "Said puttin' a turd in a candy wrapper don't make it a chocolate."

Bloody hell, but that hurt. A sharp remark had been about to jump off my tongue, but I held it back just in time. I do have some familiarity with the sting of parental rejection. I may have broken some hearts in my time, but I'll be buggered if I ever deliberately crush a woman's feelings, especially one in such a fragile mood.

"I don' ever get to wear it now," she sighed. "I think Borav would bust his gut laughing if he saw me in it." She looked intensely at me then, as if challenging me to do better than this Borav, whoever he was.

I wasn't laughing.

She nodded. "All I know are Klingons and Tellarites and Ferengi and Nausicaans and…." She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "I made love to a Klingon las' year. If you c'n call it love. You seen Klingons, righ'? Kinda like two-legged muskox, all horns 'n hair and no brains. Bad teeth. Real nasty doggie breath. Ugh. Noisy, too…he was brayin' the whole time..." She trailed off and looked at me sadly. "You're the first man I met in years and years and years who don't look like a warthog's ass."

Now if that wasn't the sweetest thing a lass ever said to me, I'm not a Reed.

"You're a beautiful man, and you got that nice fluffy hair–" she ruffled it for emphasis– "and even though you're a bit pissy, I think you have a kind heart. Tha's important to me, that a man has a good heart."

A cool finger slowly traced a path southwards from my belly button. I desperately tried to move my limbs, but muscle control had barely advanced down to my knees and elbows, which jerked just a bit. The finger was sneaking under the hem of my briefs, where it traced some small, tickly circles, each one moving a bit further south.

"Can you feel that?" she asked huskily.

You bet I could. There was nothing wrong with my sensory perception. To my great shame, Reed junior had taken notice as well. I made a heroic attempt to focus my mind on deflating balloons, wilted flowers and overcooked asparagus, but it was no use. She looked mournfully at the tent pole rising in my groin.

"Oh, there you are," she said as if I had just walked in the door.

She brought her face down to mine until I could feel her hot breath in my ear. "Hello," she breathed, and a sour whiff of Romulan ale swept over my face, "my name's Emily. Emily Wanda Kaufman from Chisolm, North Dakota, population three hunnert an' eighty five. Give or take a redneck. That's the most boring place there is on a boring lil' planet called Earth."

The fingers of her other hand, the one that was not in my pants, slowly traced the outline of my lips. "I would like it if you called me by my real name. Nobody's called me 'Emily' since I lef' Earth. That was abou' ninety years ago…"

She looked at me meaningfully and her voice dropped an octave. "I would like to make love to you…"

So that was it. _All hands, brace for impact_. I closed my eyes and steeled myself for the assault.

"….but I won't," she said and withdrew her finger from my briefs just before it reached its destination. My eyes flew back open.

She nodded sadly to Reed junior. "I know he's not here for me. Not really, and I won' take what ain't mine."

With that, she dipped forward and planted a wet kiss on my shoulder. Then, she climbed precariously to her feet and lurched off towards her bunk.

I heard a groan and a thud, and that was it for the rest of the night.


	14. Chapter 14 - Cutler

Chapter 14: Cutler 

"Crewman Cutler!"

I stopped in my tracks just as I slipped out of the Lieutenant's quarters after my twice-daily checkups on the poor, suffering man. The two young officers approached cautiously, their faces appropriately grave.

"The Lieutenant – is he better today?" asked Ensign Barrows from the armory. Apparently, he wasn't among those of Lieutenant Reed's staff who had been informed about his chief's true whereabouts.

"He's had a rough night," I improvised. "I'm sorry, but he's still contagious and can't take any visitors."

They looked concerned, bless their hearts. "How unfortunate that he is missing the festival," Ensign LaValle, one of Commander Tucker's engineers, said solemnly. "The Andorians staged a play commemorating their ice wars today, with the actors wielding genuine prehistoric weapons. We thought the Lieutenant would have loved it, so we made a recording of it." She handed me a PADD, looking a bit apprehensive.

I was touched, to be honest. I had never paid much attention to Lieutenant Reed before, thinking him a bit of a stuffed shirt and not particularly amiable – or particularly interesting, for that matter. But I was finding out that apparently, he inspired a great deal of loyalty in those who worked closely with him, although most, like these two young ensigns, weren't sure if their expressions of concern would be appreciated.

"I'll make sure he gets this," I told them, and they looked pleased. Tomorrow, I would tell them that he watched the whole thing and loved it, and no doubt that would make their day.

I had only been nine years old when I had the Tellarite pox, but I remember the misery well enough: a high fever, constant nausea, an abominable amount of joint pain and being covered in purple pustules that itched like the unholy Dickens. Of course, having lived through it provided me with all the ammunition I needed when asked about the Lieutenant's symptoms.

Not surprisingly, Commander Tucker was the one who got the most mileage out of the situation. He would find me in the mess hall when I was having lunch or dinner, put on his most empathetic face and ask in a grave voice, but loud enough to be overheard at the nearby tables, "and how is the Loo-tenant today, crewman?" As the crew members all around tilted their heads and craned their necks to eavesdrop on our conversation, I would whisper – just loud enough to make sure they caught the gist of it – "Not so well, I'm afraid, sir. The rash has gotten much worse." When the spirit hit me, I would lay right into it. "His fever is very high, and he can't keep anything down. His tongue is so swollen he can't even speak, and I had to tie his hands to the bunk to keep him from scratching at his sores." Well, that last one was a bit much, as Commander Tucker indicated by warningly raising his eyebrows at me.

Chef, concerned about reports that the Lieutenant was doing so poorly, went out of his way to cook up some of the man's favorites in hopes to help him build up his strength. Our armory officer – who usually has a robust appetite and was generally admired for his ability to eat three times as much as a normal human being without ever gaining an ounce of fat – was known to go off his feed entirely when troubled or sick.

So that evening I found myself, for the third day in a row, sitting on Lieutenant Reed's bunk in his spare quarters and stuffing my face with chicken masala, rice pilaf and a large slice of pineapple upside down cake. Yesterday, it had been beef stroganoff and pineapple ice cream and the day before that spinach lasagna and honeyed fruit salad with pineapple chunks and sunflower seeds. Chef's delight at Lieutenant Reed's returning appetite had only motivated him to double his efforts. I was going to be morbidly obese before the man came back.

And yesterday, shy Ensign Mylan from hydroponics, who everyone except the man himself knows has a 'secret' crush on our armory officer, caught up with me in front of sickbay and handed me a small bag of candied pineapple chunks dipped in dark chocolate. "I made them myself", she breathed, blushing an alarming shade of crimson. "You'll give those to him, please? But…don't tell him who they are from. Just…just say you found them somewhere or something…" after which she fled headlong down the corridor. The pineapple chunks would keep, so I left them on Lieutenant Reed's desk where he would find them when he returned.

As for me, I threw out my scale, and if I ever see another piece of pineapple, I am going to commit suicide. Or murder, whichever comes first.


	15. Chapter 15 - Emily

Chapter 15: Emily 

I woke up feeling like the entire Nausicaan cargo fleet was parked on my head. While I lay on my back fighting a wave of nausea, recollection slowly returned. Yep, half a bottle of Romulan ale will do that to you. It was a complete mystery, however, why I was wearing that old Hawaiian thing, the one that had gathered mold at the bottom of my drawer for the last fifteen years or so. But when the rest of the previous night's events came rushing back to me – the Nausicaans, Phlox, the osmium – I quickly shelved away that thought to be examined later.

I got up and dressed in my day clothes, with some difficulty, as I was sure I was going to puke every time I moved my head. When I went into the main cabin, Reed was sitting up on the rug, looking a bit disheveled, rubbing his legs.

" _Enterprise_ ," was his first word. "They should have been here by now. I was going to get to the comm station, but…" He was trying to get his legs under him, but ended up flopping forward face-first into the rug.

"Ah, shite!" he groaned around a mouthful of carpet fibers.

I helped him sit on one of the benches. He could move his limbs again, but his coordination was still on the fritz. That' s always the last thing to come back. I glanced at the chronometer. Considering it had been less than seven hours since I had dropped him with my paralyzer, he was doing amazingly well. Within an hour or two he should be back to normal.

I checked our course and position. We were still trailing the Nausicaans at their speed, and we were less than five hours from their planet. We had to act soon.

" _Enterprise_ ," he said again, "are you sure they received your call?"

"Help should be here soon," I said evasively, not looking at him.

He caught on immediately, clever fellow that he was. "What's the matter?" he asked sharply.

"Nothing."

He narrowed his eyes at me. "You didn't call them."

"I called somebody else."

He stared, incredulous. "Somebody else!" His voice had gone up three notches. "Like, who? The Texas Rangers? Batman? Mary bloody Poppins?"

"Someone who knows a hell of a lot more about Nausicaan pirates than your bloody Starfleet!" I shouted back, angry now. "Someone who's gonna help us get the osmium back without getting Phlox killed!"

His eyes blazed at me, then he looked away and shook his head. "Great. Another bloody balls-up", he mumbled. He brought his hand up, presumably to run it through his hair, but his aim was off and he poked himself in the eye with his knuckles instead. He moaned in disgust.

I looked down at him, feeling a bit guilty. Not too much, though, because I knew I had made the right decision. At any rate, it was too late now to call _Enterprise_ , so there was that.

Reed was looking miserable, and I had a murderous headache. I busied myself making us some black coffee, and when it was done, I offered to hold his cup for him so he could drink. But he insisted on trying himself and managed quite well, spilling only a little bit. I went to my liquor cabinet and put a shot of Klingon blood wine in mine. Hair of the dog.

I was just about to sit down with my coffee when the comm channel crackled to life.

" _Amazon_ , respond," came a familiar voice. "Get your liquor-soaked ass out of bed, you skinny old bag."

I turned to my companion and grinned. "Mary Poppins is here."

Reed rolled his eyes.

"This is _Amazon_ ," I called back. "What took you so long?"

"Hey! Toilet Brush, you ugly old hag! Stuck your head into any targ shit lately?"

"I'm pleased to see you too, Borav." I smiled pleasantly, and I meant it.

Borav and I, we go back a long way. But damn, I should never have told him about the toilet brush thing. Well, we were both abysmally drunk at the time. I even had to explain to him what a toilet brush is. Apparently, they don't have those on Tellar. Don't ask me how they clean their crappers. You see, I'm kinda tall, and not exactly what you would call curvaceous. I look rather like a long, shapeless object with a coarse brown mop of hair on top. Or, like one of my exes put it on his way out the door, I have all the sex appeal of an upside-down toilet brush. Yeah, well. I did mention I'm done with romance, didn't I?

"I brought some friends," Borav was saying. "If you let me dock, I'll introduce you."

I threw a few switches and in a couple of minutes, my small cargo hold was pressurized. The docking hatch was in its far bulkhead, and it was just big enough for a person to slither through on his belly. I call it my doggie door.

I took _Amazon_ out of warp, and soon, Borav's vessel appeared in our viewscreen. There were two smaller ships behind it – his 'friends', presumably. Borav maneuvered his vessel next to _Amazon_ , and with a loud clank, our docking hatches connected.

Generally, docking hatches of random vessels don't really fit together. But Borav and I once both landed our ships on a small moon and spent two days rigging an extendable connecting piece so that our docking ports would fit. That way, we could visit when we met up in space. Borav refers to those two days as our 'honeymoon', which pisses me off.

His vessel is called _Vorvek_. That's a Tellarite word, but I never found out what it means. I asked Borav once, and he just looked at me oddly and said that he would show me what it means if I ever came to Tellar with him. Yeah, sure, as if I would. Probably his favorite whore in the seediest bordello of Maralla, or something like that.

 _Vorvek_ is more than twice as big as Amazon, but not any faster. She is, however, armed to the teeth. Borav likes to pack some heat. I suppose he has that in common with Reed. I expected the two of them should get along swimmingly, once the topic landed on guns.

Reed and I stood at the doggie door when Borav wriggled through, with some difficulty.

"You're getting fat," I greeted him.

He climbed to his feet and smiled at me. "Your tits are drooping lower every time," he observed.

Borav is a sturdy fellow, like most Tellarites. He's just a bit shorter than me but about twice as wide. But in all fairness, he isn't really fat. Just built like a brick shithouse.

"This is your security escort, huh? " He gave Reed the once-over. "Fellow looks like he didn't get enough protein when he was little."

I remembered that my first reaction to Reed had been something similar, before I had seen the man in action. Admittedly, he wasn't at his best at the moment, being still a bit wobbly and uncoordinated.

Reed gave him a cool smile. "I heard when you poke a sharp stick into a Tellarite, all that comes out is hot, stinky air."

Well. Now that we had done away with the polite introductions, it was time to talk strategy. We decided we should have a confab on board _Vorkek_ , and so Reed and I followed Borav back through the doggie door into his ship. Reed fumbled a bit getting to his feet on the other side, and I reached down and helped him up.

Borav watched the whole thing and then barked out a laugh. "Don't tell me you hit the poor little runt with that pop gun of yours." He leaned down to Reed and stage-whispered, "Watch out now, that means she likes you." Reed just gave him an icy look but said nothing.

Borav activated his viewscreen and brought up his associates in the two other vessels. He introduced them as Harv and Verk; brothers apparently, who were officers with the Tellarite Orbital Police Force. They were pretty much indistinguishable, which made me think they were probably identical twins. Younger and slimmer in build than Borav, they were slightly less ugly but lacked his bubbly personality.

"Disgusted," Verk grunted by way of introduction.

"Appalled," Harv agreed.

Reed was taking charge of the meeting. He quizzed them on their vessels: top speed, maneuverability, weapons and such. It was decided that we were going to ambush the Nausicaans before they reached their planet. We all agreed that the retrieval of the osmium was the most important goal and that it had to take priority over saving Phlox's life. Reed looked grieved when he said this, but he was a professional after all and I knew he would do whatever was necessary to complete this mission. And of course Phlox himself wouldn't have it any other way. Even so, the idea was to do anything in our power to get Phlox out alive; anything, that was, except sacrificing the osmium.

Harv and Verk's vessels were the swift, heavily armed little crotch-rockets of the Tellarite Orbital Police. It was decided that they should attack the Nausicaans first, disabling their warp and impulse drive and keeping them busy and distracted with a barrage of phase cannon fire, while _Vorvek_ docked to their vessel and Borav and Reed went in to grab the osmium and, hopefully, Phlox. There were a lot of 'ifs' in that plan, but Borav was confident that _Vorvek's_ hatch should be compatible with the Nausicaan one, as he had once had some business with the Nausicaan cargo fleet. Reed thought he could blow their hatch open from our side. Harv or Verk, I don't know which, grunted that disabling a Nausicaan cargo vessel should be as easy as kicking the legs out from under an old woman. What a lovely image, I thought, but I hoped they were right.

Reed took Borav over to _Amazon_ where he proceeded to outfit him with a number of stun grenades and other gadgets of destruction out of his duffel bag.

A minute ago Reed had still looked a bit floppy, but now that he was handling his arsenal, about to go into battle, he was all clipped, sharp movements and balled-up energy. If I had known his beloved weapons would have that effect on him, I would have pushed a phase pistol or a grenade in his arms to cuddle when he was prostrate on my rug, paralyzed and miserable. Then again, that might not have been a good idea once those muscle twitches set back in.

I watched the two of them, their heads bent together, passing gadgets between them; Reed pointing and explaining, Borav nodding. I knew they'd get on like a house on fire once the toy chest got opened.

"What about me?" I said. "What do I do?"

They stopped what they were doing and both looked at me.

Reed cleared his throat. "Someone has to stay behind on _Vorvek_ ," he said. "To make sure no Nausicaans make off with her while we are on board their vessel."

"I want to come along," I said, knowing at the same moment that they were absolutely right, of course, and that I was being childish. Oddly enough, though, I felt kind of left out.

"Don't sulk, Toilet Brush," growled Borav, "it doesn't suit you."

"We need you here," Reed agreed, and then he added, "We're counting on you, Emily."

' _Emily_ '? Well, what do you know. I have no idea how he found out my real name, but whatever. No one had called me "Emily" in years, but surprisingly, I didn't mind. I liked the way it sounded when he said it, kinda soft and feminine, despite his crisp accent.

Borav's eyebrows flew all the way up his head. "Emily? Who the hell is that?"

"Take a wild guess," I told him crankily.

Borav looked from me to Reed, and back again. "You never told _me_ your real name." He sounded petulant, which was a new one for Borav.

We climbed back into _Vorvek_ , and I sealed _Amazon's_ doggie door from the outside before we separated the two vessels. _Amazon_ had to be parked and stay behind, as there would be no one to fly her. I wasn't keen on leaving her behind, but with any luck we'd be back here in an hour or so to collect her. And if things went pear-shaped, she'd be less likely to get shot at, so there was that.

We went back to warp, and in a short time we had caught up within visual range of the Nausicaan ship.

We could see right away that something odd was going on. The Nausicaans were still on course to their planet, but they weren't exactly going in a straight line. The whole ship was corkscrewing in languid circles as it sped along, like an otter lazily rolling in the water. I had never really seen a ship do this at warp. We had a brief conference, and decided that possibly it was a problem with one of their nacelles, which fired only intermittently. It was a mystery why they hadn't gone out of warp to try and fix it, but then again, they were obviously motivated to get home as soon as they could.

Well, any additional distraction could only be to our advantage. Harv and Verk went to work without further ado, and with their first two or three shots they had expertly disabled the enemy's warp drive. Reed grunted approvingly as we watched.

They continued firing volleys at the Nausicaans at impulse, but oddly enough, the enemy never once fired back. The Nausicaan vessel just hung there in space, rotating slowly on its last momentum, apparently dead.

In a minute, Borav had piloted alongside the Nausicaans and docked to their port. I caught Reed's eye as he prepared some small plasma charges, ready to blow open the hatch into the other vessel.

"Be careful," I told him. "Don't you come back dead."

" _I_ will be careful, _too_ ," Borav said pointedly as he joined Reed to open _Vorvek's_ hatch. Reed studied the alien hatch on the other side for a minute, then carefully placed his charges and ordered us to stand clear. There were a few loud pops, and then the hatch flew neatly open into the enemy vessel, revealing a long corridor beyond.

I still thought I would have liked to come along, kick a bit more Nausicaan ass, so to speak, especially if any of them had hurt Phlox. But compared to these two, I was just an amateur at fighting. That little spat in the Nausicaan cargo bay was about all the shooting I'd ever done in one day, and to be honest, I wasn't really keen for more.

Still though, funny how this always happens when you hang out with a bunch of men: sooner or later, they'll have you back where they think you belong.

I closed the hatch behind them, and then sat in the pilot seat with my pistol in my lap.

Men sharpen stick and go hunt. Good little woman stay home and tend fire. _Ungh_.


	16. Chapter 16 - Reed

Chapter 16: Reed

As Borav and I advanced down the corridor into the Nausicaan ship, we felt the deck shudder with the impacts of phase cannon fire. Harv and Verk – or, as I had immediately renamed them in my mind, Barf and Berk, were doing their job. I've had a kerfuffle or two with the Tellarite Orbital Police when I was doing work for the Section. They patrolled Tellarite space in their nifty little cruisers, catching smugglers, arresting criminals, and checking the credentials of anyone approaching the planet. They were an elite force, and they had a reputation for being ill-tempered, efficient and incorruptible. I was rather relieved when they showed up on the scene; for the first time since being dropped on that rug like a side of beef, I thought that maybe this mission could be saved after all.

Borav followed me closely, his own weapon held in front of him. I was carrying the phase rifle over my shoulder and was holding my remaining phase pistol, checking around corners, ready to drop anything that didn't look like a Denobulan doctor or a thermos flask full of osmium. At least the effects of that bloody paralyzer had finally worn off, just in time. I still felt a wee bit clumsy, to be truthful, but I hoped the slight tremor in my gun hand was all but unnoticeable to anyone but myself. I certainly should have enough aim to drop a barn-door-sized Nausicaan, should one appear.

Talking of which – where were the bastards? Courtesy of our little adventure in the cargo bay, about four or five of them should be floating through space, flash-frozen for eternity, but I estimated that there were at least three more, in addition to that troublesome Andorian. We expected that all or most of them would be on the bridge, although their continuing passivity during Barf and Berk's assault on their vessel was certainly mysterious.

We reached a junction in the corridor, and I nodded for Borav to go right, while I took left. He agreed readily enough, but not without a scowl and a grunt of displeasure. I assumed he wasn't accustomed to being ordered around, especially not by some little human tosser who was small enough to sit in his lap. Still, for a Tellarite, at least judging by the limited sample size I had previously encountered, this fellow was downright amiable.

I was moving along, wondering why the Nausicaans hadn't swarmed off the bridge into the lower deck to meet whoever was boarding them. There had to be a turbolift or crawl space that would take us up to the bridge. Just as I thought I saw a lift door ahead, I was stopped in my tracks by an unexpected sound drifting down the corridor.

Was that… _singing_?

Indeed it was. A cheerful baritone, warbling rather off-key in an unfamiliar language, accompanied by a smaller, oddly metallic-sounding soprano. And I thought I recognized the voice. I had heard it before, wafting through my drug-induced stupors during long sickbay nights, when the good doctor was singing lullabies to his critter collection.

And there was the man himself, strolling around a corner of the corridor as casually as if he was making late night rounds on Enterprise. And if that wasn't unexpected enough, it was topped by the fact that he wore one of his face-splitting Cheshire grins – and absolutely nothing else. Zippo. Nada. Not one stitch.

You could have knocked me over with a pan-fried catfish.

"…Phlox?" I managed.

"Ah, Lieutenant, my good man, but I was wondering if you would come. Isn't it marvelous weather today?" He was holding a small square box in one hand which he waved in front of my eyes. He said something in a language I didn't recognise – I guessed it was Denobulan – and the little box squealed, "Thou must sing, pretty stranger, and put away thy troubles."

"Phlox, what is…" I tried again, but he broke into song at the top of his voice, while the poor little translator valiantly tried to keep up with the squall of Denobulan, "….tickle my feet, lickle my teat, come under my sheet and pickle my meat…"

"Doctor!" I shouted over the ruckus, "where are the Nausicaans? And what the hell happened to your clothes?"

"Clothes?" He stopped singing abruptly and wrinkled his brow as if he had never heard of such things. "Ah, yes, clothes! But they are so restrictive, are they not? Why do we even bother? And I felt rather overheated after the exertion of accommodating the Nausicaan and Andorian gentlemen. So I threw them out the airlock. Good riddance, hmm?"

I must have looked a bit startled at this, for he immediately reassured me, "My clothes, dear man, my clothes." He stepped towards me and slapped a meaty hand on my shoulder. His pupils were tiny pinpoints, making his electric blue eyes even more unsettling than normal. "Have you ever known me to throw a patient out of the airlock? Hmm? Although," he added philosophically, "I know I have been tempted with a certain uncooperative tactical officer of our mutual acquaintance, when he….."

"Please, Doctor," I interrupted again, "this is important! Where are the Nausicaans? Where is the osmium?"

"Osmium?" he cried happily. "Ah yes, marvelous stuff, isn't it? Very potent."

But suddenly his face grew serious. "Dangerous stuff for you, my dear Lieutenant. You mustn't have any." He wagged a finger in my face. "you haven't been to the bridge, you naughty boy, have you?"

"Why? What's on the bridge?"

"For you? Pulmonary edema, blindness, coma, death." He recited in a graveyard voice.

I was beginning to guess what was going on here. "Are the Nausicaans on the bridge, doctor?"

He beamed at me. "They are indeed, and feeling no pain, I assure you. Do you want me to show you?"

"I would like that very much, yes. We need to retrieve the osmium and…"

"Of course, of course! Follow me then, weary traveler!" He bounded along the corridor and into the turbo lift. When I joined him, he hit a button and the lift moved upwards. Suddenly, Phlox's face clouded over once more and he wagged that finger at me again. "You are only allowed a brief glimpse, dear sir. Osmium vapors are very bad for human people. You must not indulge for more than a few minutes, or you will become one sick little tactical officer, hmm?"

I found myself wishing that Borav would catch up with us soon. Maneuvering a bollock-naked, hyperactive Denobulan safely off this ship might require more manpower than I could muster by myself.

The lift doors opened onto the bridge to a truly wonderful scene: on the deck in front of the viewscreen lay four Nausicaans, trussed up by the hands and feet with all sorts of ties and strings like so many stuffed turkeys at the annual Tucker Thanksgiving reunion. On a small stool in front of them, like some sort of idol, sat the osmium flask, its lid removed. I immediately smelled the characteristic chlorine-like odor of concentrated osmium tetroxide vapors.

All four Nausicaans were smiling happily, their eyes unfocussed, their heads lolling slowly back and forth. One of them was waving his bound hands in front of him, humming to a tune only he could hear.

The good doctor had sent the whole lot of them to the land of 'os'. Bloody brilliant.

I noticed that each one of them had a pillow under his head and a glass of water by his side. Leave it to Phlox to make sure his charges were comfortable at all times.

I looked around at Phlox, who was beaming at me. At his bare feet was a small arsenal of Nausicaan knives, daggers and projectile guns, all neatly laid out like so many scalpels in the doctor's medical cabinet. My stolen phase pistol was among them, and I quickly took it back into my possession.

I shook my head, struggling to find the words. "Phlox, that's…I can't even…you've done one hell of a bang-up job here!"

He had been watching my reaction eagerly, but now his face fell.

"No, no," I reassured him, "bang up…that's a good thing. Better than good. Smashing. Brilliant. In fact, I'm going to ask Captain Archer to assign you to my security team full time."

That brought back the fabled Denobulan smile.

A snort from the door announced Borav's arrival. He stood in the turbo lift, taking in the scene with one sweeping gaze, and then issued a rough laugh. "That's quick work, Reedy, but you should've left a few for me."

I threw up my hands, but before I could explain, Phlox had grabbed Borav by the arm and pulled him onto the bridge. "Ah, and who is this good fellow? I don't remember him from before. Do tell us your name, friend?"

"Bor'f," Borav grunted as Phlox enveloped him in a full size bear hug. Apparently the Denobulan aversion to touch had gone straight out the airlock along with the doctor's clothes.

"Bruff? A rather unfortunate name, or are you suffering from a case of dyspepsia? Ah, I seem to have misplaced my medical bag, but when I find it again I shall give you a hypospray, which should clear up any abdominal discomfort."

Borav was having a good look at Phlox from head to toe, letting his gaze pause just a bit longer on the doctor's midsection. "I heard rumors that Denobulans are hung like Bollian swamp beasts, but I'm rather unimpressed." He bent down for a closer look, frowning a bit. "Are those spots natural or have you been to that little whorehouse on Katta Station?"

Phlox drew himself to his full height and scowled at him. "My dear sir! You have issued a challenge that I am prepared to answer. May I suggest you divest yourself of your coverings, and we shall have a scientific comparison!" He thrust out an open palm in my direction. "Quick, Lieutenant, a measuring stick, if you please!"

"Phlox!" I interjected in an attempt to put an immediate stop to this new direction of events. "We need to get out of here. The Andorian, is he…"

"Oh dear, the blue fellow." In an instant, he appeared to have forgotten the slight to his endowment and was full of serious concern again. "I'm afraid he became rather ill. I took him off the bridge and deposited him in one of the crew quarters." He shrugged. "He may have joined his ancestors on the Eternal Glacier by now. Or maybe not, if I removed him in time."

His gaze traveled to the osmium flask, then back to me and Borav. His eyes widened. "Mr. Reed, Mr. Bruff!" he cried sternly, "what are you two still doing here? This is not a safe place for either of you!" He found the lid of the flask and screwed it firmly back into place, with an apologetic shrug to the smiling Nausicaans, who were blissfully oblivious. "My regrets, gentlemen, but I believe you've had quite enough for today." He grabbed the flask and the little translator and herded us towards the turbo lift. "Off the bridge now, both of you! Quick, quick."

When the lift dumped us back on the lower deck, Phlox was about to make off into the bowels of the ship, mumbling something about having to check up on his "critical Andorian patient". But Borav and I grabbed him by the arms and manhandled him in the opposite direction, towards the airlock that would get us back to _Vorvek_.

We were nearly at the hatch when there was an angry shout behind us. We wheeled around to see the Andorian stumbling up the corridor, dark blue blood running from his nose, one hand on the bulkhead to steady himself and the other holding one of those Nausicaan projectile weapons. I whipped out my pistol and took aim, but almost at the same instant Phlox stepped in front of me, his hands in the air. I heard the Andorian's shot go off the moment I shoved Phlox out of the way, and a second later both Borav and I had dropped the attacker to the deck with a double hit from our weapons. While mine was set on stun, I had a pretty good idea that Borav's was not.

"Dear me," Phlox said, pulling himself off the floor, "that is the second time I have underestimated that fellow. What an admirable constitution he has!"

He turned back towards me, and that's when I saw the blossoming stain of blood on his right shoulder.

"Oh my," he said cheerfully, looking down at the gaping wound. "but that's going to hurt."

Then he tipped forward and passed out in my arms.


	17. Chapter 17 - Reed

Chapter 17: Reed

Earhart met us at the hatch when Borav and I pushed the unconscious doctor into Vorvek. I grabbed the osmium and threw that obnoxious little translator through the hatch as an afterthought. Phlox seemed to have had some kind of bonding experience with the thing, and it occurred to me in a flash of hope that he would be pleased to have it when he woke up.

That was, _if_ he woke up.

If Earhart – no, Emily – was wondering why the doctor had a bleeding hole in his shoulder or, for that matter, why he was completely starkers, she didn't ask any questions. Instead, she rummaged around at the back of the cabin and a moment later reappeared with a blanket and some sort of first-aid kit, from which she removed a large pressure pack that she pushed firmly onto the doctor's wound. Once again, I was grateful for her quick reactions.

She handed me the blanket, which I spread over Phlox up to his waist, while Borav disengaged the hatch from the Nausicaan vessel and positioned himself in the pilot seat. I heard him talk to Barf and Berk over the comm channel while I examined the doctor's injury.

The blood loss was considerable, a red sheet of it running all the way down his chest. But when I instructed Emily to carefully lift the pressure pack, the bleeding seemed to have slowed to a gradual ooze. There was no exit wound, which meant the bullet was still inside him. This worried me, because it would probably increase the risk of infection; on the other hand, I'd seen enough projectile wounds to know that bullets typically made more of a mess on the way out than on the way in. As it was now, with Phlox lying on his back, the blood was pooling in the wound, aiding coagulation. The fact that the bleeding was slowing down gave me hope that any major arteries had been spared.

I caught Emily's eyes. They were wide with concern. "Is it really bad?" she asked.

"Bad enough, but I think it could be worse." I felt his pulse. His skin was cool and clammy. Of course, I had really no idea what a Denobulan pulse normally felt like, but I was pretty sure it shouldn't be this fast and shallow. "He needs intravenous fluids to replace the blood he lost. He may be going into shock."

"Intravenous? How are we going to do that?"

"Knowing the doctor, he's got all the supplies we need in his duffle bag." Which was, of course, on _Amazon_. I gave myself a mental kick in the arse for not thinking about bringing Phlox's bag along.

Emily nodded slowly. "Borav," she called towards the front, "put that hairy foot of yours on the gas pedal, will you?"

"Already on it, Toilet Brush," Borav grunted in agreement.

During our passage back to _Amazon_ , Borav conferred with Barf and Berk, and it was decided that the two of them would stay behind to secure the Nausicaan vessel and haul the prisoners to Tellar, where they would be prosecuted and locked away, or possibly extradited to their home planet in exchange for a healthy payment from the Nausicaan government. Borav and his well armed _Vorvek_ would escort us the rest of the way to Tellar to discourage any other miscreants who might think of grabbing our osmium to cushion their retirement accounts.

Twenty minutes later, we docked with Emily's ship. Borav removed a door from one of _Vorvek's_ storage cabinets which we used as a stretcher to quickly transfer Phlox into _Amazon_ , where we installed him on Emily's bunk.

I rooted through Phlox's duffle bag and laid out his supplies on the bed beside him. Fortunately, bless the good doctor, all were neatly labelled in English. There were hyposprays with his famous painkiller, from which I had benefited countless times myself, but even though I imagined he'd be in pain when he woke up, I was unwilling to risk giving him any drugs while he was still squiffy on osmium fumes.

I found a bag labeled "0.9% saline", some tubing and a vacuum-packed IV needle. Emily looked a bit startled when I attached the tubing to the bag and hung it from a hook on the bulkhead above her bunk.

"You sure you know what you're doing?" she asked, wide-eyed.

I gave her a brief smile which I hoped was reassuring. "More or less." When she looked unconvinced, I added, "Basic first aid is standard training for Starfleet tactical personnel."

Which wasn't the whole truth, of course. The first aid class I had taken at the academy had been rather rudimentary, and certainly didn't include administering IV fluids. However, as a Section agent I had received much more extensive medical training. When you're undercover on some alien world you don't exactly have the luxury of running to the next hospital when someone sticks a knife into you or pumps your partner full of bullets.

Except, of course, I had never done this on a Denobulan. I could only hope that the doctor had good veins and that a 0.9% saline solution was as appropriate for Denobulans as it was for Humans.

I handed Emily some tubing. "Tie this around his arm," I instructed her. "Make it tight."

She complied, looking a bit queasy. When I saw a vein bulging in the doctor's forearm, I quickly cleaned the area with a disinfectant wipe from his duffle bag and then took a deep breath.

"Here goes nothing," I said and stuck the needle through his skin. I thought I heard Emily make a strangled little sound, but I didn't look up. It took three pokes before I finally saw some blood enter the catheter when I pulled back the plunger, indicating I was in the vein. I pulled the needle out, secured the catheter with tape and hooked it to the IV bag. When a slow drip of saline travelled down the tubing into Phlox's arm, I released the huge breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. Emily was staring back at me, white as a sheet, but with undisguised admiration in her eyes.

"That was…that was awesome," she stuttered, and a moment later she had fled from the cabin and I heard the sounds of vomiting from the toilet.

Well, the poor lass. After our little rug scene the night before, it was no wonder she was still a bit green about the gills.

Soon, we were on our way to Tellar at _Amazon's_ best speed. Emily piloted her vessel and Borav followed closely with _Vorvek_. I sat on the floor beside the doctor's bunk, anxiously checking his pulse every few minutes. To my relief, it felt stronger and slower, and his breathing was quiet and regular.

His face twitched every now and then, maybe because he was in pain, but he had not regained consciousness, which worried me. I didn't know if this was due to the shock of his injury or his overindulgence in the delights of osmium vapors, or possibly a combination of both. The injury looked painful, and I suspected he had suffered some damage to the shoulder joint, but we had managed to all but stop the bleeding, and I hoped that as long as we could keep infection at bay it should not be life threatening.

I had considered calling Enterprise to get Phlox home as soon as possible, but it was just as likely there would be a surgeon on Tellar who could remove the bullet than on Andoria or the Vulcan ships, and Phlox himself would most forcefully object to any further delay in the delivery of the osmium.

I was checking his pulse once again when I looked up to see a pair of bright Denobulan eyes watching me.

"Doctor!" I said, startled. "How are you feeling?"

"Ah, Mr. Reed," he said quietly. His eyes slowly traveled from my face down my body and back up to my face again. "You are not injured?" His brow furrowed a bit, and he looked confused for a moment. "I remember shooting…"

"You're the one who got shot."

"Hmm. How careless of me." His eyes followed the IV line to the bag and widened in alarm.

"What is that?"

"Saline solution…from your duffle bag. You'd lost quite a bit of blood, and I was worried…"

"Yes, I remember. The Andorian. Oh, well, then, Mr. Reed, that was thoughtful of you…and absolutely the right thing to do.."

He lifted his left arm a bit to examine the catheter in his forearm. A slight bruise had formed where I had poked him a few times before I hit the vein. "Maybe not a professional job, but very workmanlike. You are revealing some hidden talents, Lieutenant. Where did you learn to do this?"

I smiled at him. "That's classified."

"Ah, of course it is. Well, you did a fine…what was that expression…bust-up job?"

"Bang-up, I hope. It's not quite the same."

"Bang-up, yes." He smiled sweetly. "I shall have to ask Captain Archer to assign you to my medical team full time."

His eyes closed slowly over his smile and he began to quietly hum to himself. After a while, he said, "If you would be so kind and retrieve the medical scanner from my bag?"

"I've got it right here," I said, turning the device on.

His eyes opened. "Very good. Please, pass it over the wound and down my right side and arm."

I did as he requested and then held the screen in front of his eyes so he could read the data.

"Hmmm…the bullet is wedged in the scapula…the bone is broken near the acromium but not significantly displaced…some damage to cartilage and tendons…a ruptured bursa, and the synovial membrane of the shoulder joint has been torn."

I thought all that sounded pretty grim, but Phlox smiled wearily and carefully wriggled the fingers on his right hand. "All in all, not too bad. No major nerve damage and the axillary artery is intact. After minor reconstructive surgery and some physiotherapy I expect the patient should heal up very nicely."

He looked tired then and his eyes drifted shut. As I watched his peaceful face, I had a sudden flashback to the moment on the Nausicaan ship when the Andorian appeared behind us in the corridor.

"What the hell were you thinking, jumping in front of me like that!" I blurted out. "Catching a bullet – dammit, Phlox, that's _my_ job!"

"Ah, Lieutenant. Maybe my job is not so different from yours. We are both protectors, charged with the wellbeing of our crewmates." He sighed, squeezing his eyes shut again.

"You're in pain," I said, ready to kick myself for not noticing earlier. "Shall I give you a painkiller?" I held up the hypospray in question.

He eyed it with a curious expression. "Doctor Phlox's special concoction, hmm? Tempting, but better not. It might create an unfavorable interaction with the osmium, should any of it still be in the patient's system. Maybe in a few hours."

His started suddenly, lifting his head off the pillow, a movement which provoked another painful wince. "The osmium! I recall you were on the bridge. You and Mr…Bruff, was that his name? How…how long were you exposed?"

"Myself – two or three minutes, and Bo...uh…Bruff... even less than that."

That seemed to reassure him and he visibly relaxed. After a while he said, "my Nublian newt, did it…"

"Emily found it; I believe it's quite safe."

"'Emily', is it now, hmm?" He gave me an odd look, followed by the first full-on Phloxian smile since he had woken up. "Well, in that case, may I ask a favor of you, Lieutenant?"

"Anything."

"Would you bring the newt here, please? Its secretions have powerful antimicrobial and analgesic properties…"

Emily looked wickedly amused when I fetched the small aquarium from the main cabin. I had a pretty good idea where she had found the little critter after its unscheduled walkabout, but I didn't feel a particular need to hear her say it. She had overheard part of my conversation with Phlox and expressed genuine relief when I explained that the doctor himself had declared his injury as "not too bad."

When I rejoined Phlox, he instructed me to remove the newt from the tank. As I inserted my hand into the cool water, a fond memory from my boyhood danced through my head, of my sister and I catching newts in my aunt's backyard pond on rainy spring mornings. Though somewhat clumsy on land, they had been fast in the water, but Maddie and I had become quite expert at catching them. Instead of grabbing for the little critter, I simply let my hand sink to the bottom of the tank and then gently slid it underneath the newt until it sat in my open palm. As I slowly lifted it from the water, it remained completely unperturbed and did not try to escape.

"That was expertly done, Lieutenant," Phlox said appreciatively. "Now, do you see the two large glands at the side of her head?"

I nodded.

"Those are her parotid glands. You must massage her cheeks until she begins to secrete a milky substance from those glands. Don't be too rough with her, or she will defecate on you and try to flee."

Well, I'd had a few bad dates in my time, though none of those had ever ended quite that disastrously. The little newt and I, however, were getting along just fine. She closed her beady eyes when I began stroking her head and within minutes she had produced enough milky fluid to fill a thimble-sized container from Phlox's duffle bag.

"Lieutenant, you are full of surprises today," Phlox said, watching me. "I do not believe she ever produced that much for me. Surely, newt-wrangling is not standard training for tactical officers, hmm?"

"Not exactly," I smiled and carefully returned the newt to its tank, where it immediately dived underneath the plastic plant and turned its back on us. "When I was a lad in England, there was a pond on my aunt Sherry's property. In the spring, it was full of great crested newts, mating and laying eggs. Maddie and I used to catch them."

"How interesting," Phlox said brightly. "I understand the skin secretions of some Earth amphibians have psychotropic effects. Did you lick them, or smoke their powdered parotid glands?"

I had to laugh at this. "Neither, actually. We just put them in a glass and admired them for a bit. The males look like miniature dragons, with a tall crest down their backs. My aunt always insisted that we put them right back in the pond so we would not damage them. A hundred years ago, they almost went extinct, you know? But the populations have recovered due to conservation efforts."

He had listened to this with great interest. "That is delightful. I had no idea you were so fond of animals, Mr. Reed. When we are back on _Enterprise_ , you may help me feed my Pyrithian bat."

I should have seen that one coming. There was probably little point in explaining that my fondness for animals did not extend to most of the species in his menagerie, especially if they – or their secretions – were being inserted into my bodily orifices. "Maybe if my duties permit, doctor," I told him with a tight smile.

Before he allowed me to treat his wound with the newt's secretion, the doctor insisted that I rub a small quantity of the sticky substance on the bullet graze on my arm, the one Emily had bound up when I had lain limp as a dish rag on that hideous shag carpet. I had all but forgotten about it, but it had of course not escaped the doctor's professional attention. When I protested that it was only a scratch, he admonished me, "Now, now, Mr. Reed, you of all people know that a small scratch can turn into a big infection."

So I did as he asked, and then spread the remainder of the substance on his wound. I felt the numbing effect of the secretion on my arm, and could see the relief in the doctor's face as his pain diminished.

His eyes drifted shut, and he mumbled, "One more thing, Mr. Reed…I expect you had to cut up my frock when you tended my injury, but why did you feel it was necessary to remove my trousers?"

 _Oh bugger_. I had very much hoped he'd remember that bit on his own, without my having to explain what happened to his clothes.

"Out the airlock? Oh dear. That is regrettable." He looked crestfallen. "I was quite fond of that frock. It was a gift from my beloved Feezal. Well, it must be considered a casualty of war, hmmm? Please forgive me, I am very tired…" His voice drifted off.

I thought he had gone to sleep when his eyes opened again, just a bit. His good hand sneaked out from underneath the covers and found mine, squeezing it, just once, before letting go again. "I've seen you hurt far too often, my friend", he said, slurring his words as his eyes drooped shut again. "Glad it wasn't you this time."

I watched him sleep after that, for a long time. I'd never seen Phlox asleep before. I know he has a hibernation cycle every few months or so, but apparently even Denobulans need their rest when they are injured.

Like most people, he looked younger in sleep, and maybe for the first time since I had known him, I really studied his face. A kindly face; warm but strong, with a fierceness behind the quirky benevolence that I had seen burst forth occasionally in defence of a patient, even one so humble as the severed tentacle of some alien creature which had taken up residence in our cargo bay. And although there were lines in his face, I did not think they had been carved by bitterness and disappointment. How different it was from a Reed face.

I fetched my bedroll from the main cabin – where Emily was snoring on the orange shag carpet – and laid it next to Phlox's bed. It was cramped and the floor was cold in there, but if he woke and needed water or something I would be nearby.

As I drifted off, I thought how thus far, everything on this mission had gone arse over teapot. Phlox had been the one to knock out the Nausicaans, retrieve the osmium, and take a bullet, all of which was my job. And here _I_ was, playing night nurse.

Just before sleep took me, my mind brought up the image of his hand, briefly clasping mine, despite the Denobulan aversion to touch. Had my ears deceived me, or had he really called me "my friend"?

Well, bollocks, it was probably just the drugs speaking….


	18. Chapter 18 - Phlox

Chapter 18: Phlox 

I must have fallen asleep for a while, because when I awoke, I heard Mr. Reed's soft snoring from the floor next to the bunk. I craned my neck to look how he was doing down there, but the movement produced a sudden sharp pain in my injured shoulder that I was entirely unprepared for. I must have issued a small yelp, because the Lieutenant – always such a light sleeper – was instantly awake and at my side.

"What is it, doctor?" he asked, frowning with concern. "Are you in pain?"

I was indeed, although I hated to admit it.

The aftereffects of my unfortunate intoxication appeared to have dissipated, judging by my throbbing head and the total lack of any inclination to burst into song or hug total strangers to my chest. Or throw any more garments out the airlock, for that matter. That last memory was particularly painful as I reflected upon what an utter fool I must have looked, strutting around as naked as my mother birthed me and warbling lewd Denobulan mating songs. At least I was certain that I could rely on the good Lieutenant's discretion not to relate the unfortunate episode to the rest of Enterprise's crew. I would never 'live it up', I believe the expression goes.

Following my request, the Lieutenant injected me with some painkiller, which he did eagerly and with visible relief at being able to help. The pain retreated almost instantly, and I released a long grateful sigh.

"Lovely stuff, isn't it?" he said shrewdly.

He would know, of course – of all of my crewmates, he is probably the one who's had opportunity to sample 'Dr Phlox's special concoction' most frequently.

A while later, Ms. Earhart stuck her head into the cabin, enquired after my wellbeing and announced that we would arrive on Tellar within thirty minutes. Mr. Reed answered her with a quick smile and a "thanks, Emily."

It had not escaped my attention that interactions between my travel companions had taken on a much warmer tone than at the beginning of our voyage. There was now a familiar ease between the two, leaving me to wonder if they had copulated after all during my absence. Well, it was just my bad luck that I hadn't been on hand to observe the event.

While I was numbed from the painkiller, I instructed Mr. Reed to bind my right arm tightly against my torso in order to immobilize the shoulder joint. Fortunately, I had brought a spare pair of trousers, a loose shirt and some slippers along, and if the Lieutenant thought it embarrassing having to help his CMO dress as if he was an infant, he gave no indication of it, helping instead with deft but gentle hands. He draped the shirt over my shoulders, and I stuck my left arm through, letting the right sleeve hang loose.

"Don't worry, doctor," he said while he was buttoning up my shirt. "Emily has called ahead to Tellar and they will be standing ready to get you to surgery as soon as we arrive."

"That is very thoughtful, but I have some urgent work to do first."

His head shot up at this, eyes narrowed.

"The osmium refinement process, Mr. Reed," I reminded him gently. "It is quite delicate, and I must help to get it started, lest there be another mistake and the osmium is ruined. If you recall, that happened the first time they attempted the refinement."

He listened to this, tight-lipped, and then his eyes darted off to the side in that way he has, of not quite looking you in the face when he is about to argue.

"Doctor, you are badly injured. Surely, there are others who can…"

"Mr. Reed, I hope you haven't forgotten the entire reason I came along on this mission in the first place. This process has only been undertaken twice before, and I was present on one of those occasions. There are currently no doctors on Tellar who have my level of expertise…"

"Then let it wait until your shoulder has been seen to," he interrupted, becoming quite heated. "If one of _your_ patients tried to run off with a bullet in his…"

"It cannot wait!" I exclaimed. "We have already lost nearly an entire day due to our encounter with the Nausicaans. Any further delay, even of a few hours, could result in the deaths of some children who might otherwise have been saved! Would you really prefer that over a few hours of discomfort on my part?"

My voice had risen to almost a shout. Mr. Reed loaded a lungful of air, and for a moment I thought he might fight back, or maybe even try to pull rank and remind me that the Captain had placed him in charge of this mission. But instead, he dropped his gaze, released his breath and mumbled, quite contritely, "No, of course I wouldn't."

I felt a bit guilty then for shouting at him; after all, he was only trying to safeguard my wellbeing.

"Please let me do my work," I told him gently. "As soon as the refinement process is under way, I will be a very obedient patient and submit to any treatment you recommend…Doctor Reed."

This brought a quick smile to his lips, although he still did not look at me. "Besides," I added, "I do recall a certain patient of mine who once had no objections to waiting for hours in a damp cave with a bullet in his leg, just so that…"

"Very well, you win, Doctor," he said, still smiling. "But I'll keep an eye on you the entire time."

I nodded diplomatically. "I expect nothing less of you, Lieutenant."

Mr. Reed is often regarded as cold by his crewmates, but I know this not to be true. I understand that he has been brought up within the rigid military tradition of his family, which does not allow him to freely express warmth and affection towards his crewmates. However, I have always suspected that he is possessed of a deep, quiet passion and a fundamentally caring nature. Despite his isolation and reclusiveness, I believe his prime motivation is to protect the people he cares about, and I must consider it a great honor to count among those. He is, in Commander Tucker's words, "a good guy to have at your back."

Our little quarrel had worn me out, so I took another nap while Mr. Reed joined Ms. Earhart in the main cabin during the approach to Tellar. After what seemed too short a time, I felt his hand briefly touch my left shoulder.

"We're there, doctor. Time to go" I looked up to see him standing over me, holding up a hypospray with a question in his eyes. I nodded, grateful, and allowed him to inject me with another dose of painkiller. In truth, I wasn't looking forward to having to get up and move under my own power, but Lieutenant Reed was right there, steadying me with a firm hand on my left elbow when a wave of dizziness almost overcame me.

 _Amazon_ had landed next to Mr. Brof's vessel on the roof of the main hospital, one of the tallest buildings in the capital, Maralla. We were greeted by one Dr. Nerek, a young physician who had taken over as chief surgeon from the eminent Dr. Krav, who had died not long ago at the ripe Tellarite age of a hundred and thirty-six. Dr. Nerek was accompanied by a number of assistants, several of whom did not at all look pleased to see us, a fact I put down to the habitual rudeness for which Tellarites are so well known.

Dr. Nerek nodded to my bound-up arm. "So I hear you got clumsy and got yourself shot, huh?" he greeted us. "Well, I look forward to cutting up a Denobulan. You'll be my first."

"And no doubt you'll mess it up like a first-year medical student after a long night of partying," I improvised. It had been quite a few years since I had last interacted with Tellarites, but I remembered that once you got into the rhythm of it, a bit of creative insolence could be quite…refreshing.

"Work before fun, Phlox," Nerek said gruffly. "You didn't lose the osmium again, did you?"

Ms. Earhart stepped forward, handing him the flask. He weighed it in his hands. "Good. Let's not waste any more time then. Everything's ready down in the lab."

He and his assistants led the way into the hospital, and I followed, assisted by Mr. Reed, while Ms. Earhart stayed behind to tend to her vessel.

The dizziness was back, and I was just beginning to wonder whether I would pass out, when Mr. Reed briefly left my side, only to reappear moments later pushing a wheelchair he had apparently snatched out of thin air.

"Sit down, Doctor," he commanded, and I did, relieved, knowing an order when I heard one.


	19. Chapter 19 - Reed

Chapter 19: Reed

I sat quietly in a corner of the lab and watched the activity around me. The osmium had been poured into a large heated pot under an airtight fume hood, and Phlox, sitting in his wheelchair, was directing the Tellarite assistants to set up some sort of assembly line of beakers, pipes, and bubbling cauldrons that looked like something out of Commander Tucker's Frankenstein movies. He was pointing here and there with his left arm, issuing instructions, but he looked utterly knackered, his face growing more ashen by the minute. I held myself ready to jump up and catch him the moment he should keel out of his chair.

Naturally, I didn't have the faintest idea what they were doing. I hadn't been in a chemistry lab since that memorable day during Starfleet Academy's mandatory course when I turned around while holding the Bunsen burner and accidentally bumped into my lab partner, instantly setting her gorgeous, flowing, auburn locks on fire. In hindsight, she was as much to blame as I was, having neglected to tie her long hair into a bun or secure it under a cap as was required by lab protocol. Fortunately, she escaped serious injury because I was able to almost immediately put her out with the fire extinguisher (I've always had very good reflexes), but her hair was a total loss, and so was our budding relationship.

The memory of her running screaming from the lab, covered in flame-retardant foam with the ruins of her hair hanging down her face, was engraved for all eternity upon my fragile young soul.

She ended up having to get a crew cut and walked around for the rest of the semester looking like a vengeful hedgehog. Every time I tried to awkwardly apologize, I only made her angrier. Not only that, but she saw to it that the story got to every last female on campus, making sure that cadet Reed, that inconsiderate, emotionally stunted git and destroyer of hairdos, never got another shag until after he graduated from the academy.

I was lost in these nostalgic musings of the glorious past when I saw one of the Tellarite medical assistants move to a part of the assembly behind Phlox's back, where he disconnected one of the pipes attached to a small flask, exchanged the flask for another which he had pulled from his lab coat, and reattached the pipe. It was an innocent enough action, not unlike all the other activity around me, but something about it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. The bloke seemed furtive, working a bit too quickly and glancing towards Phlox and the others, and then making rather a show of looking bored and casual as he strolled across the room to rejoin them.

It occurred to me, of course, that questioning a medical worker on his own turf could result in an unpleasant incident and end up making me look like a complete pillock, but I learned long ago to trust my instincts. To hell with good manners, I decided (we were on Tellar, after all), and rose from my seat.

"You there," I challenged the Tellarite. "What did you just do?"

They all fell silent and stared at me. Most of them, including the man I suspected of wrongdoing, had probably forgotten I was there. "Lieutenant?" Phlox queried, looking puzzled.

"That man," I pointed, "just exchanged this flask for another one when no one was looking." The moment I said it, I thought it all sounded pretty daft, but Phlox's face immediately became very serious.

"Show me," he said, and climbed laboriously out of his chair.

I steadied him as he examined the substituted flask, while the rest of the room appeared to hold its breath.

Finally, Phlox looked up. His eyes sought the offender, and his voice was loaded with more contempt than I would have thought him capable of expressing.

"You would do such a thing," he said, his voice hoarse with strain, and I could feel him quiver as I held his arm, whether with rage or weakness I couldn't tell. "You would condemn children to death – children of your own people – just to enrich yourself. You are…"

But the bloke didn't wait to hear just what Phlox thought he was. With a furious roar, he lunged forward and brutally shoved Phlox, who went down heavily, crying out in pain. In another second, I was on top of the man and wrestled him to the ground, but not before he had grabbed some kind of glass cylinder from the table, broke it against the edge and thrust it into my face. I had him on his back, my knees on his biceps, and I saw my blood drip into his ugly face just as several more Tellarites landed on top of me. I felt myself being shoved and pummeled, and the truth is, I had no idea whether they were trying to fight me or help me subdue their colleague.

When it was over, I was sprawled to one side, panting, watching a couple of burly security guards haul the offender away, snarling at him in their language. There was quite a bit of blood all over the place. I suspected most of it was mine, but I was pretty sure I could still see out of both eyes, so it couldn't be too bad.

Phlox was another matter. He had fallen where he had been shoved by the Tellarite, and was seemingly out cold. Doctor Nerek and his assistants were loading him onto a gurney, and then they rolled him out the door.

Torn for a moment whether I should follow the guards to ensure the villain was properly secured, or follow the medics to keep an eye on Phlox, I decided on the latter. For me, it wasn't really much of a choice.

And so I stumbled along in the wake of the gurney, my hand pressed to my face, feeling blood running through my fingers from whatever damage that broken glass cylinder had inflicted, thinking how everything on this bloody mission had been just about complete and utter tosh.


	20. Chapter 20 - Emily

Chapter 20: Emily

I was working on my vessel on the roof of the hospital, painting over some of the scorch marks those Nausicaan noodle-dicks had put on her hatch, when Borav appeared.

"Toilet Brush," he announced himself. "There's been some trouble in the lab; some kind of fight."

I dropped the brush. "Is Reed okay?" were my first words, which made Borav scowl.

"Who gives a shit about the runt," he mumbled crankily, not looking at me.

"I thought you liked him."

He laughed savagely. "Not as much as you do."

I looked at him, wondering what that was all about.

"Why don't you worry about Phlox instead," he grumped. "Nerek is operating on him, fixing his shoulder." Borav turned and began walking back towards the hospital entrance, indicating me to follow him.

When we entered the surgery ward, a nurse directed us to a quiet corner, reminding us gruffly to stay out of the way. In one of the chairs, his legs stretched in front of him and his head tilted back, sat Reed. At first I thought he was sleeping, but then I noticed the bloody gauze pad covering his face. He sat up and pulled the cloth off his face when we arrived.

"Good grief, man, what the hell did you do now!" I burst out.

Reed gave me a crooked grin as I leaned in to have a proper look. He was a mess. There were three nasty cuts around his right eye socket, one in his eyebrow, one along the temple down to the cheekbone, and another one over the bridge of his nose. They had been stapled shut and some sort of shiny gel had been spread over them. He looked like a bad quilt.

"Went for my eye, the wanker," Reed commented dryly. "Missed, though."

Well, the 'wanker' had hit just about everywhere else, but that pretty pale eye looked just fine in the middle of all the carnage. I took the opportunity to marvel at the mysterious color of it; sort of a clear gray, I decided, like the English channel on a rainy day…

Borav cleared his throat. "Back off, Toilet Brush. Give the man some space!"

I slumped into a seat next to Reed. A sudden wave of relief washed over me; relief that he wasn't badly injured, and that he hadn't lost his eye. It took all my self-control to resist the overwhelming urge to give him a hug. Instead, I reached out awkwardly with one hand and petted him on the knee.

Borav was watching with narrowed eyes, but said nothing. Something odd was definitely going on with Borav. He was a rude old bastard, but his rudeness was normally of the cheerful variety; I had rarely seen him this cranky.

While we waited for news on Phlox, Reed told us what had happened in the lab. I figured we all owed him a debt of gratitude for paying attention and not letting down his guard, even at a time when he wasn't in charge. I suppose that sort of thing goes with being a watchdog. A really good watchdog. Even so, he told the story without directing any of the credit at himself.

"What about the osmium? It didn't get ruined again?" Borav asked him. He hadn't sat down.

Reed shook his head. "They were able to restore the apparatus to the way it should be, and it's running smoothly. The one who stitched me up said they should have the first batch of medication ready in a few hours."

"Right." Borav stared down at us for a moment, and then he abruptly turned on his heels and walked off. "Later, Toilet Brush," he called behind him on the way out the door.

What can I say. He's a Tellarite, after all.

Soon after, Nerek came out of the operating room, looking pleased with himself. He informed us that he had removed the bullet, wired the broken shoulder blade and fixed some ligaments and tendons, all the while ranting about the inferior construction of the Denobulan joint capsule, at least compared to its far sturdier Tellarite equivalent. "It's a wonder those people evolved to walk upright," he snorted.

Reed insisted that we be allowed to see Phlox, and so Nerek led us into the recovery room. The doctor was sleeping peacefully, a faint smile on his face, his shoulder and arm encased in a massive cast. Nerek herded us back out and told us to return in a few hours when Phlox was awake.

We were both hungry, and so we wandered about the hospital corridors until we found some kind of cafeteria. You'd think Tellarite food would taste like so much pig slop, but they actually have some decent salads and some nice, spicy soups. I talked Reed into trying one of the latter, and I think he liked it, judging by the way he shoveled it down. We both got a tall glass of some kind of sweetened ice tea, and clanked them together in a toast to Phlox, the osmium, and the sick kids, who hopefully would soon be on the mend. Reed, despite his cut-up face, seemed cheerful and relaxed. I could see the tension fall off of him, now that it appeared our mission had been successfully completed after all, despite all the crap that happened along the way. It was a joy to see him like that.

A shadow fell on our table, and we looked up to see a tall Tellarite frown down on us. It was one of the twins Borav had brought along to help capture the Nausicaans – Harv or Verk; I couldn't tell which one.

"Denobulan," he barked, and we sat there, staring stupidly, until we realized he was asking a question. I had noticed before that those two were not men of many words.

"Ah, yes, the doctor," Reed assured him. "He's recovering now. He'll be all right."

Harv-or-Verk nodded. Then he produced a package of some kind from behind his back and placed it on the table in front of Reed.

Surprised, Reed folded back the cloth wrapping. "I'll be. Is that…?"

"Coat," said Harv-or-Verk.

Indeed, it was the doctor's coat. The one he had worn when he had been abducted by that Andorian – but not, as I recalled clearly enough, when Reed and Borav had brought him back. Not that I hadn't wondered why the doctor had emerged from the Nausicaan vessel butt-naked, but events at the time had been too urgent for me to ask any questions.

Reed seemed very pleased. "I believe the doctor will be delighted," he said. "But how did you…"

"Floating in space, outside the Nausicaan vessel," the tall Tellarite explained, looking slightly worn out after stringing so many words together. "Mangy old thing," he added as an afterthought, in case he'd gone for too long without uttering an insult.

I was trying to imagine how the doctor's coat had ended up in space, minus the doctor, but I wasn't having too much success.

"What happened to the Nausicaans?" Reed asked.

"Jail."

"And the Andorian?"

"Freezer."

Well, that was that, then. I was still a bit fuzzy on how our Nausicaan pirates and the sabotage attempt by that Tellarite lab worker fit together, but I was sure the details would emerge eventually.

Harv-or-Verk was still there, looking down at us with an uncertain expression, as if trying to work something out in his head.

"My niece," he said.

Reed and I were back to staring at him, trying to make sense of this apparent non-sequitur.

The Tellarite turned his face and nodded towards a far door, the one I knew led to the ward where the kids who had fallen sick with the palsy virus were kept.

"Come and see?" he asked, almost shyly. Reed and I exchanged a glance and then followed him into the quarantine area.

On either side of a long corridor were many small rooms, each accessible only through a sealed air lock with a build-in decontamination chamber. There were large glass windows, however, which allowed people in the corridor to see and interact with the patients inside the quarantined rooms.

Harv-or-Verk stopped at one of the rooms. "My niece," he said again, his voice sounding much softer.

We looked through the window. A man and a woman sat by the bed, their backs towards us. When Harv-or-Verk rapped his knuckles against the glass, the man inside turned around with a scowl. When he recognized us, he nodded briefly. It was the other twin, of course, Verk-or-Harv. The woman must be his wife. And in his arms, sound asleep and so pale she looked transparent, was a very small girl.

"First to get sick," her uncle told us. "Would have died, but now….hope."

The last word was almost croaked, and I realized with a start that the man was close to tears. I'd never seen a Tellarite cry, not even Borav. Reed and I looked through the window some more, watching the twin brother slowly rock his daughter in his arms, stroking her hair, while his wife's hand rested on her husband's back. Reed watched with his lips pressed tightly together, and I saw his Adam's apple go up and down a few times.

I had not expected to find such a scene, but really, it should come as no surprise to any civilized soul that even Tellarites, insolent jerks that they are, love their children. Or their nieces, for that matter.

A young boy had been sitting in a chair nearby, observing us. Harv-or-Verk now gestured for him to come over, which the kid did eagerly.

"My nephew," he introduced, his hands on the boy's shoulders.

The kid cocked his head and looked us over curiously. He was at the age when Tellarite kids lose the rosy baby-piglet complexion and start sprouting warts and hairs all over their faces; probably the Tellarite version of puberty. If he had been human, I would have put him at about twelve years old.

"You are the humans from the planet Dirt," he declared.

"We are," Reed said kindly. "Although we prefer to call it 'Earth'."

The kid thought this over for a moment. "Same stupid thing."

Well, he had a point there.

"My sister is sick," he next announced, pointing at the glass wall. "She was going to die, but they got some new medication, so I guess she won't, now."

He sounded rather disappointed at that last part. Then he looked from me to Reed and back to me again.

"Your woman is bigger than you," he told Reed, making a face that indicated just how hilarious he thought that was.

I cringed a bit, but Reed took it straight-faced. "That's because I feed her very well," he told the kid, who looked unconvinced.

He squinted insolently up at Reed's quilted, swollen face. "Did she beat you up?"

"Now listen here, you little asshole," I blurted, but Reed just looked amused.

The kid stepped closer and pulled himself to his full height, which was about the level of Reed's belly button, and stared a challenge up at him. "I bet I could kick your skinny ass, human."

"I bet you could, too," Reed said solemnly.

Harv-or-Verk had been looking on with pride, but now he gently pushed his nephew forward. "Piss off, little brat" he told him fondly, and the kid disappeared with one last piggish snort directed at Reed.

There was an awkward pause when we all looked at our feet, uncertain what else there was to say.

"You can piss off, too," Harv-or-Verk finally mumbled, nodding down the corridor, and I for one was glad that the conversational norm had been reestablished. Tellarites getting the feels was something I didn't quite know how to deal with. I was more comfortable around them when they were their usual rude and unpleasant selves.

Talking of rude and unpleasant, where was Borav? I decided to go look for him while Reed went to check up on Phlox.


	21. Chapter 21 - Reed

Chapter 21: Reed

When I entered his room, Phlox was sitting up in bed, looking surprisingly well. He was studying a PADD that he put down to greet me.

"Ah, Mr. Reed!" he exclaimed cheerfully, but his face went from delight to dismay in an instant. "What have you done to yourself now!"

I remembered that Emily had said something very similar when she had seen my face.

"I didn't exactly do it to myself, Doctor," I reminded him gently.

"Of course not, please forgive me," he allowed when I bent down so he could examine the cuts. "You were lucky your eye wasn't damaged. When it is healed, we can see about removing the scars, hmm?"

The bandage on his shoulder had been peeled back a bit, and sitting right on top of the surgical scar, looking rather fat and comfortable there, was an old friend of mine.

"My osmotic eel," Phlox said fondly, tickling one purple tentacle with the fingers of his left hand. "I believe you and he are well acquainted. Dr. Nerek was so kind as to fetch him for me, although he required some convincing. He also brought me my little Nausicaan friend here." He indicated the translator box that was sitting on his bedside table. "Of course, the Tellarite translators are far more sophisticated, but this little fellow is proving to be quite diverting during my confinement. I am teaching it Denobulan."

He reached over to turn it on and then told it, "Say good day to Mr. Reed, little one," after which he fed it a sentence of carefully pronounced Denobulan.

The little box sat and thought for a moment and then sang out excitedly, "Roll over, Fatty, let me squeeze thy…"

"Oh dear," Phlox said, turning it off. "I'm afraid Denobulan is a rather complex language. We are still working out the nuances. Have a look at this instead…"

He showed me the PADD he had been reading, which displayed some kind of scan of his shoulder joint.

"I am quite pleased with Dr. Nerek's work," he said happily. "The way he rebuilt the fibrocartilage around the glenoid cavity is really very ingenious. See here?" He pointed at a place in the image, and I nodded dutifully, having no bloody idea what I was looking at.

I lifted the package I had brought onto Phlox's lap and helped him remove the wrapping. His eyes widened in surprise.

"My frock!" he exclaimed. "Mr. Reed, you are a magician! Where did you find it?"

I admitted that the credit wasn't mine, and told him who was responsible for retrieving it instead.

"I must remember to thank the gentlemen," he said, "this is a very unexpected reunion. What an adventure it's had." He was smiling to himself, stroking the fabric lovingly with his left hand and looking so pleased that I felt a surge of warmth assaulting my cynical old heart.

He inquired after Emily and 'Mr. Bruff', and I updated him on the events. He was very relieved to hear that the first batch of medicine was running into young Tellarite veins as we spoke.

"It would appear that we have succeeded after all, despite all the difficulties we've had. It never does to give up optimism, hmm, Mr. Reed?"

I wasn't about to remind him that optimism wasn't a Reed family trait. But then, he probably already knew that.

Instead, I asked him to explain to me just what exactly had transpired in the lab, just prior to the shite hitting the ventilation system. There were still a few pieces of the puzzle I hadn't put together, most importantly why exactly a Tellarite medical assistant would want to destroy the osmium refinement process.

Phlox looked at me shrewdly. "Hmm...are you as well versed in chemistry as you are in newt wrangling?"

I laughed out loud at this. Someday, maybe over a pint or two, I might tell the good doctor about Cadet Reed's valiant last stand in the academy chemistry lab. But not today.

"I will try to explain it in laymen's terms then," Phlox said. "The refinement process turns the osmium into a chemical compound that attaches to certain receptors on the surface of nerve cells. This makes it impossible for the virus to bind to those receptors and enter the cells, which it must do in order to replicate. In other words, it renders the virus harmless, allowing the patient's immune system to quickly overwhelm and destroy it."

"I see. What was the stuff in that bloke's flask then?"

"A substance that corrupts the protective compound, thereby making the medication quite useless."

"…but why would he…?

"Because, at the same time, it does not affect the osmium's ability to react with oxygen to form osmium tetroxide."

"Ah. So you can still get high on it."

Phlox nodded. "If you are a Nausicaan, yes."

It was all falling into place now. "Is that what happened the first time they tried to refine it?"

"I believe so," Phlox said grimly. "Our friend most likely corrupted the first batch in a similar manner as he tried to do ours – only that there had been no vigilant tactical officer present who caught him in the act."

I acknowledged the compliment with a nod. "And if the osmium was ruined, they would have disposed of it…"

"…and no doubt the villain would have somehow appropriated the disposed material to sell to his Nausicaan associates."

Just how he had done this last bit was something that no doubt the Tellarite authorities were tickling out of him at this very moment. I was certain that he would receive no mercy. My memory conjured up the image of the sick little girl in Berk's arms – no, Verk's arms; his name was Verk, or maybe it had been the other one, Harv – and I decided that 'no mercy' was just fine with me.

I left Phlox to a well-deserved nap and made my way back through the hospital. As I wandered along the corridors, I passed a bathroom and went inside to relieve my bladder. The round holes in the wall were probably urinals, or at least I hoped that's what they were. Just as I unzipped and pulled out my gear, someone entered and stepped up to the hole next to me. I turned my head to nod a greeting. It was Borav.

I felt his eyes on me as we stood side by side, taking a companionable piss together. Something was odd about the whole thing, though. Borav exuded a brooding aura of malevolence, making my hackles go up.

The attack came so suddenly that I barely had time to move my hands from my zipper. He lunged for me, grabbing me by the jump suit, and although I managed to deliver a kick to his knee cap that made him groan in pain, he soon had me shoved up against the wall by my collar, my feet dangling off the ground.

"You," he growled through his teeth. "Explain!"

"…if you could be a bit more specific…" I croaked.

"What's that thing between you and Toilet Brush?"

"What?" I was genuinely surprised.

"I've seen the way she looks at you. She likes you."

"Oh, that. Well…you know the saying…there's no accounting for taste…"

"Don't give me any shit, Reedy." He shook me like rat. "I want to know what your intentions are towards her!"

"Intentions?" I couldn't help myself. This was priceless. I started to laugh, but it turned into a cough when he tightened his forearm across my throat.

"So you think this is funny, huh? Listen here, you little runt. I know Toilet Brush. She gets her heart broken by guys like you. I've seen it before. If you hurt her, I'll rip off your pitiful little balls and shove them down your throat."

"Fair enough." I strangled my laugh and decided to put an end to this nonsense. "You're a bloody fool, Borav, you know that? Take your paws off me and I'll explain it to you."

He narrowed his eyes at me but complied, letting me slide down the wall until my feet were back on the ground. My zipper was still down to my crotch and my junk was hanging out. Just spectacular. I pushed Borav away from me and took a moment to straighten myself out.

"I'm waiting," he reminded me warningly. "You and Toilet Brush."

I sighed. "You want some advice, Borav? Call her 'Emily'."

"What the hell for?"

"It's her name, you gormless knob!"

He stared at me, and I realized then just how completely clueless he was.

"Look," I told him. "I'm going to be out of her life in a day or two. She might never see me again. But you - she's known you for years. You're her friend. Be a little nice to her, and you might actually stand a chance."

He seemed genuinely taken aback. "I'm always nice to her," he protested.

"You call her 'Toilet Brush', for bollocks' sake!" I shook my head. "You know, compared to Tellarites, Human women may have slightly elevated standards where 'nice' is concerned."

"How so?" he snarled. "Explain!"

I sighed, shaking my head. "They like to be complimented, you know. They like pretty things. I don't know, try buying her a dress, or some flowers, or take her someplace beautiful. Tell her she's pretty…"

"She's not pretty," he pointed out.

"Tell her anyway. If you do it right, she'll believe you. If you get it really right, you'll even believe it yourself."

I could have pinched myself. Was this really Malcolm Reed, relationship arsonist and emotional wrecking-ball, dispensing dating advice in some alien loo to the only bloke in the universe who was even more of a plank in such matters than himself? Reality seemed to have taken a sudden left turn, and for a terrible moment I thought I was going to lose it on the spot and go into hysterics.

Borav was still working things out in his head. "Toilet Brush in a dress?" he mused, his brow furrowed.

"You'd be surprised, mate," I told him.

"Emily," he mumbled to himself, trying it out. "Em-mil-ly. Huh."

Abruptly, he turned and walked away. "Later, runt," he called over his shoulder, leaving me standing there among the urinals, wondering if I should laugh or cry.

What was that old classic TV show Trip liked to watch? Ah yes, of course.

Welcome to the 'Twilight Zone', Loo-tenant.


	22. Chapter 22 - Archer

Chapter 22: Archer

I was on my bed, reading, with Porthos snuggled up against my side. Finally, I had some time alone. Diplomacy, I had decided over the last few days, was far more exhausting and a great deal less satisfying than exploration.

Today's highlight had been a tasting at one of Andoria's hallowed ale distilleries. That was the official version at least. If you ask me, it was nothing but a rather ham-fisted plot to embarrass the Vulcan delegation by getting them thoroughly hammered. After all, who could resist a drunk Vulcan?

Except, it turned out that those Vulcans are equipped with two hollow legs apiece (I spent almost the whole shuttle trip home trying to explain the meaning of that one to T'Pol), and at the end of the day even the lightweights among them were barely glassy-eyed, while nearly the entire Andorian contingent had to be carted off to the nearest hospital to be treated for acute alcohol poisoning.

Shran had been about the only Andorian still on his feet, though thoroughly annoyed at having been unable to drink Soval under the table. Well, I should say, more annoyed than usual, since being pissed off is Shran's ground state.

I believe my officers were rather disappointed – well, I'm pretty sure at least Trip was – by having to watch the whole thing from the sidelines because their stick-in-the-mud captain had strictly ordered them to keep their hands off the booze.

Well, I'd rather we forfeit the intergalactic drinking contest than end up making fools of ourselves.

A series of sharp knocks on my cabin door started me out of my musings. I glanced at the chronometer – half past midnight. Barring an emergency, my crew wouldn't bother me this late – unless it was Trip, and he had forgotten that I had a door chime.

"Open the damn door, Pinkskin, or I'll kick it in!"

Ah, Shran. Great. And still drunk, from the sound of it.

I hit the door control and there he was, leaning on the frame, one antenna drooping, his eyes bloodshot in dark blue. Behind him, Ensign Rawlings of the transporter gamma shift gesticulated apologetically. "Sir, I explained to the Commander that you were resting and suggested he come back in the morning, but he..."

"That's alright, Ensign," I assured him. "You did fine. Dismissed." An intoxicated Shran in full combat mode would be an unstoppable force for a timid young officer.

Rawlings beat a grateful retreat.

Shran steamed past me into my cabin, trailing a whiff of ale in his wake. Startled, Porthos jumped off my bunk, tucked his tail between his legs and curled up on his doggie bed. I kinda wished I could do the same.

"We need to talk, Pinkskin," Shran said hotly.

"Commander," I said tiredly, sitting down on my bed, "it's past midnight."

"I have received a communication," he plowed on, pacing up and down. "From the Tellarite Orbital Police."

That got my attention.

He stood and glowered at me. "I'm sure you've heard of them."

"I have," I said carefully. This didn't bode well, but I wasn't about to let on to Shran that I was worried.

He continued pacing, dipping his antennae every time he passed under the struts supporting the bulkhead.

"I was informed that a shipment of highly valuable osmium has arrived on Tellar. It was sent by the _Vulcans_ " – he spat out that last word – "to cure a disease that has broken out among children."

Great, I thought, so the secret was out. So much for getting through the week without a diplomatic incident. "Why would the Tellarites inform you about this?" I asked Shran.

He glared at me. "Before I answer that, Pinkskin, tell me if you knew about the osmium."

I sighed, rubbing my eyes. "I did. In fact, two of my officers were involved in delivering it to Tellar." I figured there was no point in denying it. Shran and I weren't exactly bosom buddies, but whatever you might call our relationship, it had always been based on mutual honesty.

He studied me for a moment with narrowed eyes, and then resumed his pacing.

"There was an incident," he snapped. "A bunch of Nausicaan pirates tried to steal the osmium. They were led by an Andorian."

He stopped pacing to face me.

"The Andorian was a member of my crew," he stated flatly. He had visibly turned a darker shade of blue, which I thought must be the Andorian version of a blush.

The surprise must have been written on my face. Shran dropped his gaze to the floor, clearly embarrassed. I knew there was nothing he valued higher than his honor and that of his crew. To have one of his own people consort with pirates behind his back must be a low blow to him indeed.

"A low-ranking medical crewman," he explained. "An aide in my sickbay. A Tellarite medical worker was also involved. Apparently, the two of them have collaborated for years to smuggle controlled drugs between Tellar and Andoria. When the Tellarite found out about the impending osmium transfer, they involved a Nausicaan cargo crew and thought it would be their biggest haul yet."

He laughed savagely. "Can you imagine, Pinkskin? Tellarites, Andorians and Nausicaans, working together, united in a common goal."

I shook my head at the irony. "Maybe someday, your governments will get to that point as well."

Shran snorted in disgust. "If we do, let's hope we won't carry out our business on the backs of children."

He turned away from me, and I assumed the embarrassment was so great that he found it hard to look me in the eye. "You haven't known many Andorians, Archer," he told me, tracing his finger along the edge of my desk. "Those you have met, like myself, have been members of the Imperial Guard. We are soldiers. We live by a code of honor. Although," he amended sadly, "not all of us do, I should say, after this betrayal."

He was silent for a while, lost in thought, but then he turned around and looked at me again. "You were right to keep the osmium transfer secret, Archer. A guardsman who lives by the code would not wage war on innocent children, even if they be the get of hated Tellarites."

"What about your government?"

"Politicians!" he spat. "They are the same on all worlds, ambitious, greedy and without honor. If the osmium deal had become known to my government, they would have used it as an excuse to destroy the peace with Vulcan."

I wasn't sure I agreed with his utterly dim view of politicians; not all of them at least, but I wasn't about to contradict him. After all, he knew his own people better than I did. "But will the Tellarite Orbital Police not inform your government?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I asked them not to, and they agreed. The knowledge need go no further than this room."

I was relieved to hear that. "Fine with me. Will they return your crewman?"

"He is dead," Shran said brutally, "which is fortunate for him. I told them to dispose of his corpse in whatever way it pleases them."

There was one more thing I needed to know. "Shran, when you spoke to the Tellarites, did they say anything about…"

"Your officers are fine; they have completed their mission with honor." He added quietly, "You should be proud of them."

"I am," I said sincerely, and I meant it.

On his way out the door Shran stopped and stared down at Porthos, who looked up at him rather nervously and hesitantly wagged his tail.

"This is your bedmate?" he asked, incredulous.

"My dog, Porthos," I introduced.

"That will not do, Archer. Tomorrow, I will find you a warm and willing Andorian woman." He shook his head, making a disgusted face. "A dog! Pathetic, Pinkskin."

With that, he let himself out of my cabin. Before the door closed behind him, I saw him weaving down the corridor, head bowed and shoulders slumped.


	23. Chapter 23 - Emily

Chapter 23: Emily

I lay on my back underneath _Amazon's_ console, fumbling with some wires and replacing worn out relays, when Borav came in.

"Toilet Brush," he greeted, nudging my leg with his foot. "Get up."

"Piss off, Borav, I'm working."

"We're going on a trip."

I crawled out from under the console and sat up. "We're doing what?"

"Get your jacket. It's cold in the mountains."

I blinked at him. "Mountains? What the hell are we doing in the mountains?"

"You'll see," he said enigmatically.

Well, he had me going, I admit. Why not? My repairs could wait, and I had nothing better to do.

While I got my stuff together, Borav wandered around the cabin, poking at things. Soon he was at my liquor cabinet, checking out my collection, as he likes to do whenever he comes to visit.

He pulled out a bottle and squinted at the label. "Schnapps?"

"From Austria," I said. "That's a place on Earth where they know how to drink."

He replaced the bottle and pulled out another one.

"And what's this?" he asked, holding up the Romulan ale bottle.

I'd been waiting for him to find that one.

"Don't touch that!" I barked. "That's too good for your rotten gut. Put it back!"

"What is it?" Borav looked interested. "I thought Romulan ale was blue."

"Only the cheap stuff." I glared at him, ripped the bottle from his hands and lovingly restored it to the cabinet. "The golden stuff is brewed only for their royalty. Cost me a fortune."

Which was plausible enough. We really didn't know anything about the Romulans, did we?

I closed the cabinet and punched the code into the number lock, knowing full well that Borav was watching, and then herded him outside.

Borav had rented a small two-seater hover car that was parked on the roof next to _Amazon_ and _Vorvek_. We climbed inside and he started the engine. Minutes later, we were sweeping over the rooftops of Maralla towards the distant mountains.

People always think that Tellar should be a lot like the Tellarites: some ugly, nasty, smelly place, the kind you don't want to see up close. A big swamp maybe, or an endless desert, scruffy with dead vegetation like a three-day beard.

But the truth is that Tellar is quite beautiful. It has many climate zones, like Earth. Maralla sits on a moist, temperate continent, and is surrounded by fuzzy blue-green rainforests that lap up the slopes of snow-capped volcanoes, like waves surging up a rocky shore.

Borav steered the craft up a wide valley, carved by a great river that was winding in languid serpentines through the thick forest. The late afternoon sun pierced through a cloud and sent down shafts of golden light that danced over the tree tops and made them come alive with a lovely rosy glow.

"Emily," Borav said out of nowhere.

I looked at him sideways.

He grinned back toothily. "That's your name," he explained.

I looked back out at the forest, wondering what the hell that had been all about and what kind of come-back I might throw at him, but then Borav cleared his throat.

"You are looking pretty today."

My head snapped around. "Borav?"

I was beginning to get worried. Something very weird was going on. I mean, I've heard that people sometimes start talking crazy shit when they have a blood clot in the brain or something.

"What's gotten into you?" I asked him.

"I'm taking you to a beautiful place, Emily," Borav said, and all my alarm bells went off at full volume.

"Alright," I said, "stop the car."

"We're not there yet."

"I don't give a shit. You're not dragging me off into the woods to have your way with me." I got out of my seat and started yanking on the door handle, which of course was in lock mode while the car was in the air. "Put the car down. I'm getting out!"

"Sit your ass back down and shut up, Toilet Brush," he barked and for a moment, it sounded like the old Borav was back, which was kind of reassuring. "Getting hysterical doesn't suit you. Besides, it'd take you about a week to hike back to the city from here."

I sat back down, and Borav shook his head at me. "Dragging you off into the woods. Really, you think I would do that?" He actually sounded a bit hurt.

Well, no, to be honest, I didn't really think he would do anything like that. This was Borav, after all, with or without the blood clot.

As we kept heading upstream, the valley narrowed to a canyon and then suddenly widened again into a vast amphitheater of forest, enclosed by shadowed mountain slopes striped with waterfalls. The falls were feeding a large pool at the head of the valley, under a vertical cliff, the headwaters of that great river we had followed to this place.

The quality of the forest had changed up here; the trees were less dense and lighter in color, more of a greenish-gray, looking oddly delicate from a distance.

As we descended towards a small building in a clearing, I saw why this was the case. I gasped in surprise.

"The trees are transparent!"

Borav nodded. "Glass trees," he explained.

The small cabin seemed to be some kind of ranger station. We got out, and while Borav had a brief chat with the ranger, I checked out one of the trees. It wasn't really made of glass, of course. It was wood; at least it felt like wood when I stroked the rough bark, but it was definitely transparent. When I touched it, it was warm, like the hide of an animal. You could see all the way through the trunk to get a fuzzy view of the forest beyond, not unlike looking through a frosted-glass window. Inside, sap was moving in stop-and-start fashion through delicate veins, and small creatures like beetles and worms were feeding where they had tunneled through the wood to tap into the vessels.

"Come along now," Borav said quietly from behind me, and I started. I hadn't heard him approach.

We rode on into the forest, weaving low to the ground through the glassy trees, until Borav parked the craft in a mossy grove and killed the engine.

For a few moments, his broad ass was waving in my face when he got up and fumbled to pull off the roof, which folded all the way to the back of the car. Then we sat for a while in silence, the canopy of glassy leaves rustling overhead.

"What happens now?" I asked him.

"Just wait," was his answer.

We waited – for what, I had no idea.

So here I was, parked in the middle of a forest in some sort of a convertible. At sunset. With Borav. Any moment now, he would start serenading me. Or more likely, trying to feel me up. The best response, I figured, was probably to either bolt or have a laughing fit.

But then, something started happening in the forest. A distant breaking of twigs, a rustling of dried leaves underfoot, and a few odd snorts and snuffling noises, coming closer. I nervously looked at Borav, but he seemed unperturbed.

And then I saw them: animals were coming. Very large animals, slowly moving in from all directions through the trees. I shifted in my seat, wondering if this was the moment to bolt, but Borav gestured me to stay put.

"Be quiet, or you'll frighten them," he whispered.

At first sight, you might have called them ungainly, with their stocky bodies, short legs and ridiculously long, flexible necks. Imagine the neck of a giant swan stuck on the body of a hippopotamus. But their heavy bodies moved with a grace all of their own, one step at a time, anchoring them to the ground, while those elegant necks wove through the tree branches and reached into the canopy to pull off transparent leaves with long, deer-like muzzles.

Their skin was a dazzle of ever-changing shades of green and gray, and at first I thought I was watching the play of light and shadow filtering through the canopy of glass leaves. But it was the skin itself changing color, like that of a chameleon, except that patches of it were becoming alternately opaque and then again as transparent as the trees. I could see muscles ripple and grayish tendons flex. Deep in their chests, I saw the rhythmic throb of their powerful hearts, pumping gray-green blood into large vessels which branched and branched again, forming a ghostly network of rivers and creeks which seemed to merge with the blotchy mosaic of the forest shimmering right through their bodies.

Suddenly, something startled them. In an instant, their rounded bodies turned patchy with transparent green, mimicking the bushes in the undergrowth; their necks, straight up, became tree trunks, patterned with lichen and moss. In a moment, these large, seemingly ungainly creatures had become all but invisible, an astonishing camouflage. A wind sighed through the forest, and they swayed their necks in perfect unity with the trunks, as if the creatures and the trees shared a secret language among themselves.

Before I knew what was going on, I felt tears roll down my cheeks.

I reached up and touched my face. I hadn't cried in years. Not once in all those years I have spent in space: millions of dark, lonely miles, hauling junk for people who won't even look me in the eye when they pay me. I talk to myself. I drink too much. I spend days staring out the window of my vessel into the emptiness between the stars. I'm no longer young, and the best things in my life are a filthy orange shag rug and a collection of alien liquor bottles.

Until that moment in the forest, I hadn't even noticed how starved I was for something truly pure and beautiful.

Borav leaned over and I felt his breath in my ear.

"They are called vorveks," he whispered.

"They're called vorveks?" I whispered back. "But that's the name of your vessel!" I looked at him in amazement.

He shrugged at me, grinning. "I was hoping you'd hate them, Toilet Brush."

"They are revolting," I assured him, breathless with awe. "Hideous."

He grunted, satisfied.

"Ugly bastards, aren't they," he said fondly. "My family raised an orphaned one when I was a kid. Annoying, useless thing, ate all my mother's flowers and crapped all over the garden."

"What happened to it?" I asked, thinking that they probably cut it up and had a big pot of vorvek stew.

He nodded at one of the grazing creatures in front of us.

"That one?" I whispered, incredulous. "That's your vorvek, the one you raised?"

He nodded again. "Ungrateful, clumsy thing. Won't even recognize me when I come visit."

But I wasn't so sure that was true. After a while, his vorvek came over to us and bent its graceful neck to stare at Borav out of one of its small, dark green eyes. He broke off a branch from a glass tree and held it up, and the vorvek's long tongue came out and delicately pulled off the leaves.

I don't know, but it made me think of Borav in a whole new way. Ugly old bastard, who would have thought?

On the way back to the city, Borav explained that the vorveks were very rare, like their natural habitat, the glass forest. The place we had seen was one of only a handful of protected reserves where they still lived in the wild.

As we rose out of the glass forest to head through the canyon and down the river, the sun sent a last slanted ray through the canopy before it dipped behind the mountains, and the glass leaves, like millions of prisms, broke the light into countless arrows of every color in the universe.

"They are planning to develop the place for visitors, you know," Borav said. "build an educational center, a camp for kids and such. They'll need small-craft pilots to haul materials up here for the next few weeks."

He looked at me. "I put your name forward. Job's yours if you want it, Emily." As an afterthought, he added, "I signed up, too."

I found myself wondering how many off-worlders other than myself had seen this place, which must be one of Tellar's greatest treasures, the glass forest with the last remaining vorveks. Maybe Borav had shown me his people's dirty little secret, which they kept so carefully hidden from the rest of the galaxy – that deep down in their rude, crusty old hearts, they loved a beautiful thing.

Darkness fell swiftly over the great river valley, and sometime later, when the lights of the city appeared in the distance, Borav reached over and put his hand on my knee. I drew in some air, ready to tell him to stick his hairy old paw where the sun don't shine, but then I decided that for once, I should shut the hell up and just go with it.


	24. Chapter 24 - Emily

Chapter 24: Emily

Three days passed. Borav and I worked on our ships, parked side by side on the roof of the hospital. Borav had gotten me a larger water tank and helped me install a simple shower in my loo. I'd have to sit sideways on the toilet lid so I could close the door to hose myself down. Not exactly the Risa Intergalactic (not that I could ever afford that place), but it was a whole step up from taking sponge baths.

On our last afternoon, Reed joined us, bringing a few bottles of what passes for beer on Tellar. He had spent some days with with Harv and Verk, ensuring that the crooks were properly squared away. The cuts around his eye had scabbed over a bit and no longer looked swollen, but they were still covered with the same shiny gel, which they had told him accelerated skin regeneration and would reduce scarring.

Reed explained that the Tellarite and the Andorian had been secretly working together for years, smuggling medicines and drugs. How and when they met was anybody's guess. Mostly, it had been small potatoes, a few vials here, a box of pills there, but when the Tellarite told his Andorian buddy about the osmium, that one had the immortal idea to lasso in a Nausicaan cargo crew for a part of the profit. Well, you know how that turned out. The Andorian had been put on ice (how fitting for an Andorian, eh?), the Tellarite would be tried in their highest court for treason, and the Nausicaans were being shipped back to Planet Limproot, in exchange for a hefty payment from their government. The money, which Reed said was substantial, would be equally distributed among all the Tellarite families whose children had fallen ill.

We drank our beer and then we went to see the kids. Most of them were no longer quarantined, although they were kept in the hospital a few more days for observation. There was an open courtyard at the center of the hospital where they had let the whole kaboodle out for a bit of fresh air. Dozens of the little critters were climbing up and down some kind of jungle gym and chased each other through the flower beds, and in the middle of it all, comfortable in a large cushy arm chair with his feet propped up on a small ottoman, sat Phlox.

His right arm was encased in a huge cumbersome cast, and he was wearing his frock, draped over his shoulder. On his lap, snuggled into the curve of his left arm, sat the little girl we had seen in the quarantine ward, Harv's daughter – or maybe Verk's. She looked a whole lot better than the last time we had seen her; still a bit pale, but she was watching the activity all around with wide, interested eyes while sucking on one of her thumbs.

"Isn't it wonderful," Phlox greeted us, beaming. "They will all recover, even this one." He planted a soft kiss into the little girl's rose-colored hair.

For a while, we all just stood there, sharing the moment. A whole herd of restored little kiddos running around and squealing like so many piglets on Old MacDonald's Farm. Oink oink oink. I ventured a sideways glance at Borav. A strange expression sat on his ugly face. "Look at that", he kept saying, shaking his head, "would you look at that." I wondered if he had been that cute once, when he was a little piglet himself. Gnarly old warthog that he was.

So there we were. Our mission was concluded, we had saved the day, and Phlox had sufficiently recovered to travel. It was time for me to take Reed and the doctor back to their ship. _Enterprise_ had finished her business on Andoria and, because she was reluctant to enter Tellarite space lest the Andorians got wind of it, would meet _Amazon_ half way between the two planets.

The afternoon sun was touching the rooftops of Maralla when Borav, Dr. Nerek and some of his assistants saw us off on the roof of the hospital.

"Come back to annoy us sometime," one of the nurses said gruffly.

"We'd be extremely pissed off to see your ugly mugs again," another one snarled.

Nerek shook Phlox's good hand. "Let me know next time you walk into a bullet. I'll replace those garbage joints of yours with some decent prosthetics."

Wasn't that sweet. I was wondering if Phlox and Reed were aware that we had just experienced the Tellarite equivalent of a group hug.

Borav clapped Reed on the shoulder. "You don't look like much," he told him. "But you're a tough little nut."

Coming from Borav, that was practically a love sonnet.

Soon, we lifted off the roof. Before going into orbit, I took _Amazon_ across the city and up the valley I had visited with Borav, flying low, so that Phlox and Reed could get a glimpse at the glass forest.

Phlox, with his face pressed to the rear window, was oo-ing and aah-ing at the magnificent sight of the sunlight glittering in multiple colors through the glass canopy. Reed was leaning over my shoulder, craning his neck so he could see better, his eyes round with wonder.

Our last evening together passed a lot more pleasurably than that first one at the beginning of our mission. Phlox was in a jolly mood, telling stories of his home world, and I donated some prize samples from my liquor collection. The good doctor tasted everything with great enthusiasm, which earned me a worried look from Reed. However, if Reed was concerned about a possible reappearance of the naked, singing, bear-hugging version he had encountered on the Nausicaan ship, he needn't have feared. Clearly, this wasn't Phlox's first drinking party, and the worst we got out of him was an elaborate, one-arm-waving description of the artificial insemination techniques he had developed for the Denobulan pet lemur.

The next morning, when I steered _Amazon_ up _Enterprise's_ butt and into her launch bay, I felt an odd knot in my stomach. If you had asked me on day one of our mission, I would've told you I was ready to throw these guys out the hatch or peddle them off to an Orion slaver, just to have my vessel to myself again. But now that we were about to say goodbye – let's just say Amazon would feel a bit larger and a lot quieter than she had before.

Archer and a Vulcan woman – his first officer, I believe it was – greeted us when we climbed up the stairs from the launch bay. I was helping the doctor up the staircase and Reed made up the rear, his small frame virtually obscured under the pile of duffel bags and terrariums he was carrying.

Archer's broad smile waned a little when he saw Phlox's bandaged shoulder, and one of the Vulcan's eyebrows went up.

"You have injured yourself, doctor," she stated unnecessarily.

"Not to worry, Captain, Sub-commander," Phlox assured them cheerfully, "only a minor mishap. I have been expertly tended to by Doctor Reed."

That brought up another eyebrow and a confused wrinkle to Archer's brow, until Reed's cut up face emerged, after he deposited his gear at the top of the stairs.

"Malcolm!" Archer exclaimed, "what did you do to your face?"

Reed smirked. "Ah, yes, sir, I'm afraid I've always been a bit cack-handed at chemistry lab."

Archer, his smile frozen under an expression of puzzlement, looked from his medical to his tactical officer and back again. "Gentlemen," he said slowly, "I look forward to reading your report."

"Of course, sir," Reed said immediately, straightening up. "I'll have it for you later tonight."

Archer reached out and clapped him on the shoulder. "In a couple of days is soon enough, Malcolm. It's good to have you back. And you too, doctor."

I made my good-byes to Phlox and the others, but after they had left, Reed lingered a bit, giving us a moment alone together in the launch bay.

"Stick to Borav," he told me. "He'll watch out for you."

I made a face. "He looks like a warthog's ass."

Reed laughed. "He does look like a warthog's arse," he admitted. "But … someone I've come to respect once told me that what matters most is that a man has a good heart."

Probably an old girlfriend of his, I figured. Or maybe his mom. Well, whoever had told him that, they had a pretty good point. Borav and I, we'd been fighting and cheating and abusing each other since the day we met. But he had a truthful heart, did Borav, and in all the ways that truly mattered, I supposed, he was my friend.

"How about you," I asked Reed. "Do you have someone?"

"What do you mean, someone?" he replied, cocking his head a bit, as if it wasn't perfectly clear what I meant.

"You know. Someone you like. Someone special. Someone who looks out for you?"

He smiled sweetly. "Why, Miss Kaufman, I believe that's none of your business."

Well, he was right about that, of course. It wasn't.

We stood around awkwardly for a moment, and then, impulsively, I stepped forward and enveloped him in a big hug. He stood stiffly for a few seconds, but then I felt his arms around me, and his hands hesitantly patted my back.

"There now," he said, carefully extricating himself from my embrace. "There, lass. You'll be alright." I think he had blushed a little, but it must have been the light in the launch bay.

"Maybe we'll run into each other again someday," I said, swallowing.

"Possibly. If you hear that _Enterprise_ is nearby, give us a shout, hm? We'll have you over for tea."

We both nodded, knowing that wasn't very likely. The galaxy is huge, and Enterprise would be far away in deep space, going about the kind of business that doesn't involve small cargo pilots.

But then again, you never know.

He picked up his duffel bags and turned to leave.

"Take care of yourself…Malcolm," I called after him. "Can I call you Malcolm?" I watched anxiously how he would react to the use of his given name.

After all, once you held a guy's dick in your hand and helped him piss into a Romulan ale bottle, it would be kind of awkward to go on calling him by his last name.

Before he disappeared through the launch bay door, he looked back at me once more over his shoulder. The last thing I saw of him was that mysterious little smile of his, just at one corner of his mouth.

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 ** _Well, we are nearing the end. Just one more chapter to go - the epilogue!_**


	25. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Phlox

"Ah, Mr. Reed, that's very kind of you," I greeted him when he arrived in sickbay under his burden of duffel bags and cages. "Please deposit everything on the biobed over there."

He did as instructed, asking, "Do you need any help unpacking, doctor?"

I assured him that Crewman Cutler could help me with that. "But before you leave, allow me a brief look at the cuts on your eye, hmm?"

He dutifully sat on a biobed and turned his face to me. His cuts were healing nicely, and I was pleased to be able to tell him that they would produce minimal scarring. Something else caught my attention, however, and I leaned in closer to have a better view at a small spot in front of his ear.

"Hmm. How interesting," I commented.

Of course, Lieutenant Reed wouldn't be Lieutenant Reed if he didn't immediately go into tactical alert mode at the first indication of trouble. He visibly stiffened and sat up a bit straighter.

"Doctor?" he said, worried. "what is it?"

"If you will allow me to take a small sample, I'll have the answer in a moment."

The Lieutenant tilted his head while I harvested a tiny tissue sample from the small lesion. I quickly transferred it to a slide, which was a bit awkward as I only had one hand to work with. After a few moments looking at it under my microscope my suspicion was confirmed.

"Congratulations, Mr. Reed. It appears that you have contracted the Tellarite pox." I beamed my best smile at him.

I had hoped my attempt at jollity would soften the blow, so to speak, but unfortunately, it seemed to have the opposite effect.

The Lieutenant stared at me, aghast, his mouth open. "Are you trying to make a joke, doctor?"

"I'm afraid not. You are in the very early stages, but the diagnosis is clear."

He ran his hand through his hair, shaking his head. "But…how? Why? I mean, what are the odds?"

"I am afraid the odds are rather favorable when one spends enough time among Tellarites."

"What about you? You've been around just as many Tellarites as I have."

"Fortunately, Denobulans are quite immune to that particular virus," I said, trying not to sound too smug.

"And Emily, wouldn't she…?"

"I imagine, given her long association with Tellarites, that Ms. Earhart has had the disease years ago."

"Bloody hell."

Sitting there with his shoulders slumped, he looked so forlorn and miserable that I had to suppress an overwhelming urge to give him a fatherly hug (no doubt a residual effect from my regrettable osmium intoxication).

"I am truly sorry, Lieutenant," I said earnestly. "We caught it early, and I can give you medication to reduce the symptoms. It's a pesky little disease, but not a dangerous one. Every Tellarite child has had to live through it."

He gave me a dark look, as if to remind me that he was not a Tellarite child.

"I am afraid you will have to stay in your quarters under quarantine for a minimum of 5 days."

His opened his mouth, no doubt to protest that he had this or that terribly important thing to do in the armory, when I cut him off, "…unless you want to pass on the pox to all of your armory crew."

His mouth snapped shut again and he stared at me in round-eyed horror. "Bloody hell, doctor, did you have to put that image in my head?"

He shook his head some more and then lowered himself off the biobed. "I'll be in my quarters then," he mumbled in defeat and slouched towards the doors. Just before he slipped into the corridor, I heard him say,

"Pants. This is just pants."

I ventured a quick glance at his departing bottom, wondering if there might be anything amiss with his trousers, but then I decided that it must be yet another one of those peculiar expressions unique to his island.

Reed

At the very least, Phlox had allowed me to do a bit of work from my quarters, 'as long as you feel up to it, Lieutenant'. He had felt it necessary to point out that symptoms would get worse before they got better and that I probably wouldn't feel up to much of anything in a day or two.

Consequently, I thought it wise to spend my first afternoon of captivity catching up on armory reports, before this ridiculous kiddie disease knocked me on my arse. Not that there was much to report, since Ensign Müller had taken good care of the armory in my absence, which pleased me greatly.

I entertained myself for a while watching a delightful Andorian weapons dance that a couple of ensigns had recorded for me, and then logged onto the ship-wide message board to catch up on the scuttlebutt, always a fine source of entertainment on a slow day. The festivities on Andoria had gone off without a hitch, not counting a few cases of intoxication and the resulting black eye or two. Doctor Phlox had returned from Denobula, where he had managed to break his shoulder during a rather spirited game of let's-ride-Uncle-Phlox-around-the-table with his young nephews. Even so, he was reported to be in the best of spirits, and his vacation had clearly done him good. He had brought a gift for Ensign Sato, a strange alien translator device, and during lunch time, our communications officer had the entire mess hall in stitches by making it recite a rather unofficial translation of the Vulcan Prayer of Atonement. On the down side, rumour had it that Lieutenant Reed, poor feeble sod that he is, had nearly recovered from the Tellarite pox when he had suffered an unfortunate relapse, and would be off his tits for another week or so.

In summary, all was well on the good ship _Enterprise_.

At dinner time, Crewman Cutler appeared in my quarters with a heavily laden tray of Chef's finest concoctions, which she plunked down rather ungraciously on my desk with the words, 'you better believe I won't eat _this_ for you', which I thought was an odd thing to say, not to mention a mite insubordinate, considering that, prostrate and pathetic as I was, I was still a superior officer. I mentally combed through my recent memory for any incident when I might have offended her, but I came up empty.

She lightened up, however, when I enquired about the origin of the chocolate-dipped candies I had found on my desk.

"They are from an admirer," she explained, smiling slyly. "And no, I won't tell who, sir. I've been sworn to secrecy."

I held up one of the pieces and eyed it suspiciously. The existence of an admirer was a highly improbable scenario. It was far more likely that some of my armory staff were trying to slip me chocolate covered micro charges in an attempt to blow up my head.

"Do you want me to scan them for you, sir?" Cutler asked sweetly.

I took a tentative bite. Pineapple! They were quite delicious. I ate another one, and then a third, before I realized that Cutler was still standing there with that smile on her face.

"You're dismissed, crewman," I told her, and she vanished with a giggle.

I was half way through the surprisingly elaborate meal Chef had prepared for me (making me wonder what I had done to deserve such a treat, or whether he was just trying to buy his way out of combat training again), when Trip called.

I turned on my monitor, and there was his smiling face. "Malcolm! I just got off shift and Phlox told me that you….ah, shit! Dang, Malcolm, gaawd, ah'm sorry," he babbled when he saw my cut-up face, now newly polka-dotted with erupting pustules.

Dear old Trip, always so expressive. Just what I needed to make me feel better about the whole situation.

"Hell, that just ain't fair. You look like the London city map. Why's it always have to be you? Of all the things to catch, what are the odds, huh?"

"That's what I said, too," I told him.

"Well, that just blows. But listen, Malcolm. Capt'n's real pleased with you. The Tellarites have contacted Starfleet and complained loudly about how y'all thoroughly messed up the job and behaved like complete jackasses over there. Which of course means they're real grateful and impressed with your professional conduct."

I had to laugh at that. "Let's hope the brass at Headquarters know how to interpret Tellarite."

"Nah, don't worry, Jon'll make sure they do. In fact, I have it straight from the horse's mouth that the Cap is going to put a commendation in for you."

"Now wait here, it's really Phlox who should…"

"Keep yer knickers on now, Phlox is getting one too. So how're you feeling? Do those things itch?"

"Not too bad," I said, scratching one on my neck, "though Phlox tells me it'll get worse."

"Good. Let's celebrate while we can then. Why don't ya have a look under your bed?"

"I beg your pardon, Commander?"

"Take a look. I had Cutler put a li'l something for you there before you got home."

I went down on my knees and pulled a small bucket from under the bed. In it sat two bottles of ale – and not just any ale!

"'The King's Bones', Greyfriars, Leicester," I read off the label. "Trip! That's top-notch stuff! How on earth did you get your hands on those?"

"Ah have my sources, Loo-tenant," he drawled, smiling broadly. "I was gonna save 'em for your birthday, but that's a long way off yet and I figured, why let a good thing wait, hey?"

"You're a real friend, Mistah Tuckah." I sat back down on my bed and opened one of the bottles.

"Well then, here's to you," Trip winked, lifting his own bottle of ale. "Jus' don't tell Phlox I fed you booze, or he'll cut my ass into bite-size chunks and throw 'em to his critter collection."

Laughing, we clinked the bottles against our screens, and then we drank.

It was good to be home.

Emily

I steered _Amazon_ up the winding river valley, towards the forest of the glass trees. Borav in his _Vorvek_ was flying half a click ahead. We were hauling our first load of building materials to the ranger station, where we would work for the next few weeks.

I was looking forward to seeing the vorveks again.

But before we had left Maralla, there had been one important thing I needed to do.

On the way back from _Enterprise_ , I had checked my liquor cabinet, and sure enough, the bottle of Romulan ale was gone.

Good old Borav, always so reliable.

I knew he thought he had to get back at me for that business with the pills and the turkey baster, when I had wriggled my paralyzer away from him (which he had stolen from me in the first place, if you recall). And so I had gleefully been amusing myself with an image of Borav, sitting down to a nice tall glass of stolen Romulan Royal Ale, of the rare golden variety.

But then another picture intruded, of Borav standing in the seat of his rented hover car, feeding glass leaves to the vorvek, smiling like a little kid.

Suddenly, the joke I had planned to play on him had gone a bit sour. In fact, it seemed downright childish. In my defense, I had been as drunk as a bishop at the time I had come up with the idea. But maybe, I decided, Borav and I had reached a point where it was time to put those silly games and practical jokes to rest and start acting like grown-up people with each other.

And so, last night, when he was out with his buddies, I had sneaked onto _Vorvek_ to steal back my Romulan ale bottle. I found it in his bunk, tucked away underneath his pillow. What do you know, but isn't that cute?

I took it and poured it where I should have poured it all along: down the toilet. In its place, I stuck the bottle of Austrian schnapps under his pillow, along with a note that read, 'don't drink it alone, you old thief.'

There was one other thing that needed to be laid to rest. That night, I raised a pint of Klingon blood wine in a toast to dear old Amelia Earhart, may her blessed bones rest in peace, where ever they are. I figured that pretty and glamorous as she had been, Amelia probably wouldn't have bothered with a hairy old guy like Borav. But plain old Emily Kaufman from Chisolm, North Dakota was still among the living, at least for a little while yet, and she didn't have to be so fussy. She knew a good man when she saw one. Even if he was a rude old bastard who looked like a warthog's ass.

Borav must have found the schnapps bottle when he came home last night and went to bed. No doubt he was up there in his pilot seat right now, chewing on his claws and wondering what his next move should be.

Maybe tonight, there'd be a dinner invitation to some home-cooked Tellarite pig slop along with a few too many shots of Austrian schnapps.

I was curious to see what he'd come up with.

And in a couple of months or so, when this vorvek gig was over, maybe it would be time to give good ol' Planet Dirt another try. I would convince Borav to come along. I thought of him, reaching up with his thick arm to feed that beautiful, fragile creature.

Perhaps we could pool our earnings and stay in one of those fancy game lodges in East Africa, to look at the animals. Lions. Zebras. Giraffes. Elephants.

I bet he would like the warthogs.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ the end ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 _ **Many warm thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing! I hope it was worth your time. :)**_


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